Coffee-FlavoredSweat t1_j1yqwog wrote on December 28, 2022 at 11:38 AM

Reply to comment by megavikingman in Group opposed to Maine consumer-owned utility turns in signatures for a ballot question of its own by DrMcMeow

Lol, sure.

$16 per month. Don’t spend it all in one place, you’re still on the hook for the $80/month mortgage payment.

megavikingman t1_j1yshd8 wrote on December 28, 2022 at 11:58 AM

How I know your numbers are wrong: CMP is still in business, after being purchased.

If they make enough money to spend a million bucks on a ballot measure that may fail, they are profitable enough to buy.

Coffee-FlavoredSweat t1_j1yy0ha wrote on December 28, 2022 at 1:01 PM

It’s pretty easy math.

$40 million per quarter comes straight from the news article, divided by 3 months, divided by more than 800,000 customers.

Feel free to do your own math and prove me wrong though.

popejohnpaul2nd t1_j1z4pv0 wrote on December 28, 2022 at 2:04 PM

Not sure what interest rate you are using to come up with $15 billion of interest. At 5% lifetime interest on a 30yr, $9 billion loan would be about $8.6 billion.

Lets talk profit. The $40 million represents just CMP. If we take a look at the 2021 year end financial reports combined net income would be about $263 million. If we want to truly look at cash income, we need to add back depreciation, as well as add back interest, for a new entity wouldn't be responsible for the repayment of CMP's debt. That would leave us with about $487 million compared against $285 million in annualized interest repayments. I want to ignore principal repayments as those are accounted for on the cash flow statement and there is whole lot of additional fuckery going on there (e.g., CMP reported $183 million in net income in 2021 but $330 million of cash provided from operating activities). I am also not able to look at a Versant only cash flow statement.

It would appear a new entity could handle the debt load. I don't think it would result in cheaper rates right away, but certainly in the long run. I would imagine that service levels would also improve as they would be committed to serving their customers instead of padding the rate base to justify rate increases.