TECO Energy (TECO Energy) Risk Assessment

TECO Energy Inc was incorporated in Florida in 1981 as part of a restructuring in which it became the parent corporation of Tampa Electric Company. The Company is an energy-related holding company with five core businesses, consisting of regulated electric and gas utility operations in Florida and other operating companies engaged in coal mining and synthetic fuel production, waterborne transportation services and unregulated electric generation with long-term contracts and regulated electricity distribution in Guatemala. In 2000 and 2001, the Company announced a series of investments in unregulated domestic power generation facilities outside of Florida, which were made in the 2000 through 2003 period. In the same period, the Company also invested in other smaller unregulated energy service providers within Florida. These investments were made in anticipation of a movement toward competitive energy markets in Florida and other states in which the Company was investing in new power plants. In 2003, the Company announced its revised business strategy, which was to focus on its Florida utilities and other profitable operating companies and to reduce the risk to cash flow and earnings from its involvement in the merchant power sector. Since that announcement, the Company has taken a number of steps that have eliminated its merchant power risk and improved its financial results. The Company's regulated utility companies, Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas operate in the high-growth Florida market. Tampa Electric serves almost 720,000 retail customers in a 2,000-square-mile service area in West Central Florida and has electric generating plants with a winter peak generating capacity of 4,730 MW. PGS, Florida's largest gas distribution utility, serves more than 360,000 residential, commercial, industrial and electric power generating customers in all major metropolitan areas of the state, with a total natural gas throughput of almost 1.8 billion therms in 2015.. Peoples Gas System, a division of Tampa Electric Company, is engaged in the purchase and distribution of natural gas for residential, commercial, industrial and electric power generation customers in Florida. The Company's other energy-related operating companies are: TECO Coal, TECO Transport and TECO Guatemala. TECO Coal, through its subsidiaries, operates 13 surface and 27 underground mines and related coal processing facilities in eastern Kentucky, Tennessee and southwestern Virginia producing metallurgical-grade and high-quality steam coals. TECO Transport, the Company's waterborne transportation company, through its subsidiaries, operates a fleet of inland river barges and towboats on the Ohio, Mississippi and Illinois rivers and their tributaries; a fleet of eight oceangoing tug-barge combination units and three ships that operate in the Gulf of Mexico and world wide; and a dry-bulk storage and transfer terminal located on the Mississippi River southeast of New Orleans. TECO