Lots of IT people cut in Columbus
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HR/IT rumors are just rumors.
Transmission? You are in severe danger. Take that as a warning folks.
We are what is called a "natural monopoly" meaning that we are allowed to operate without competition because a competitive market would be too unwieldy or unfeasible.
You're telling me even under monopoly conditions we still can't operate effectively unless we have external investors? How? Where is the money going? I realize we are in a capital-intensive business but why is there apparently such a huge need for investor money?
Just doing some quick math, our outstanding shares at the end of 9/2024 was 0.534B.
The last 4 dividend payouts were $0.93, $0.93, $0.88, and $0.88.
This means over the past 4 quarters, we paid roughly $1.933 billion in dividend payouts. Almost $2B cost of parasitism. Every year. Imagine if that money could have gone to capital projects, or back to our employees, or passed down as savings to consumers.
When you go to the AEP website, the very first tab right at the top of the page is "Investors." Proudly proclaiming front and center who this company is for.
Many more cut backs needed to keep electrical bills lower, without substantial increases. The managers and office workers will need to go, the workers have already been cut too thin.
The idea that shareholders come first is known as shareholder primacy, a corporate governance theory that prioritizes shareholders over other stakeholders. This theory is based on the idea that shareholders are the only stakeholders who take risks that deserve a variable reward. Shareholders never went up in a bucket or climbed a pole in an ice storm to restore power while ice coated tree tops and branches are snapping and going off like shotg-ns before crashing to the ground. They never restored power in 100 degree plus heat with high humidity. They have never walked a distribution right of ways choked with undergrowth, infested with ticks, chiggers, yellow jackets, snakes and thorns that can give you cellulitis. They can always acquire more wealth but we only have one life to risk. I guess we know how much our lives are valued by shareholders and corporate officers. If you die, they will come out and pull the AEP logoed shirt off your lifeless body and say let the buzzards clean him up, its cheaper.
I've heard IT and HR are being cut. Not sure about what level. Also demotions continue.
Flattening is so important, it's very important that we frontline employees are closer to Bill on the organization chart. That way when he ignores our feedback we really get the message that we are irrelevant to his decision making.
Who claims people are being let go "as we speak" without substantiation? I'm not saying it isn't true, but don't go dark for hours if one knows something.
I believe IT and Finance are the last 2 groups left to go thru org flattening.
Man i would pay to see them walk Therace out that trash ruined AEP!
@1pdx+1qB6FXi3
What areas, departments?
Post ID: @1pdx+1qB6FXi3
You said managers are being let go as we speak - what group(s) are being impacted (IT, opco's, etc.)?
Managers being let go as well speak.
The plan is to sell off assets to keep credit metrics investment grade, divide the company up so it’s easier to stuff things in rate base in the respective regulated jurisdictions, pray load growth goes up with data centers and continue to reduce head count in groups that aren’t profit centers so you can stuff more in rate base. Any strategy built on m&a is foolish because who knows what regulators will say.
Not sure, if you spin off the west and then merge, you might have basically 3 BH energy companies from the East Coast to the West Coast. Spinning off the southern states would basically create CSW again or they could merge with someone else down south. I understand that would take a lot of states to say yes. If not, what's the plan? Turn AEP into a shell of it's former self with 10k employees and 10k contractors operating a company with barely any growth.
I don't see a plan.
I mentioned a BH acquisition/merger to coworkers the day he started and they looked at me like I was nuts. Personally, I think it would be tough with regulators on certain states.
I think he's here to go scorched earth for one last big payday and then disappear into the shadows. He is purely mercenary.
Bill is already at retirement age for a CEO. It begs the question why come back? Why leave another company after 6 months only to come here. I understand the took the age cap off for him but really, how long will he want to stay? End of 2025? End of 2026? Is he here to set the company up for a merger and then to walk away. Remember what happened to CSW, most of the CSW folks were the ones cut in the end. Either by buy out or forced retirement. If AEP is the target, most of the cut will still come AEO side. I seriously doubt AEP has the ability to buy another firm unless it's really small. BH operations are mostly in the west so I could see the west service area being off loaded to someone else when the East merge with BH. That's my prediction.
Some months back, one of my coworkers sent a question to “Ask the CEO”. Now, the question was based on a few real issues and ideas our team had.
Somehow that question was routed from Bill to our VP. This (former) VP then asked our supervisor to come up with a response to a question that basically came from his own team! We got a real laugh out of that.
A day later, Bill sends the verbatim message that our supervisor came up with, back to my coworker. You can’t make this stuff up.
The only thing brigading the review section of Kathy Fehrman's totally unrelated restaurant would do is demonstrate how powerless AEP employees are at addressing the actual cause of their problems.
Bill's wife recently opened a restaurant. "Oak Park" in Des Moines, IA. Someone posted about this the other day and the message got deleted. Let's all be adults and don't leave negative Google reviews. That would be ridiculous.
why are posts getting deleted?
https://www.businessrecord.com/architect-oak-park-restaurant-warm-not-intimidating/
Eventually, Kathy and Bill Fehrman, Oak Park’s owners, told Hartman and his team that they could design the restaurant without including the house. The catch? The Fehrmans gave the team one week to produce a new design that included a state-of-the-art kitchen and dining area where every guest had a seat by a window.
https://www.dmcityview.com/civic-skinny/2023/05/03/spendy-condos-a-history-of-iowas-closed-colleges-and-investments-in-highland-park/#:~:text=Fehrman%20is%20married%20to%20Bill,energy%20companies%20throughout%20the%20world.
The Kathleen J. Fehrman Revocable Trust paid $2,838,799 for a unit that takes up half of the top floor in the eight-story building at 3750 Grand Ave. (Or, as the sign says, “3750 ON Grand.”) Fehrman is the developer of the Oak Park restaurant under construction a few blocks away on Ingersoll and is a commissioner and former chair of the Iowa Department of Transportation. According to the DOT, she is also the managing partner of Fehrman Investments, LLC.
Fehrman is married to Bill Fehrman, the president and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which owns MidAmerican Energy in Des Moines as well as energy companies throughout the world.
Walgreens didn't pay a dividend, first time in 90+ years. AEP better pay a dividend or else.
There are 2 other threads on this site about AEP but this one is the most active.
When the last employee walks out please turn the lights off and lock the door. Attach a sign to the outside of the door closed due to hedge fund fraud.
@1p5h+1qB6FXi3 remember HR works for the company, not the employee. They will do what is BEST for the COMPANY NOT for the EMPLOYEE! Ask any decent labor lawyer and they will tell you to document everything in writing when dealing with HR. HR will backstab you in a heartbeat if it means saving the company from a lawsuit. HR has never been and will never be your friend.
AEP is a multi-state company. We routinely collaborate with employees remotely because our contacts live all over the US. We have team members in Columbus, Tulsa, Texas, West Virginia, Louisiana, all over. Many of us are intelligent college-educated professionals, yet the best Bill can do is treat us like children and use nonsense HR pseudo-language about "tremendous opportunity" to justify his decisions, which obviously have ulterior motives.
This guy is a menace. He hasn't even been here a year and he's already making sweeping changes to the company, radically worsening the lifestyle of all employees and selling off huge stakes in our business. It's hard to imagine what this company will be like in 5 years but it feels like Bill was brought in and immediately started taking us in the wrong direction.
if you are remote (and make $110k per year) and live about 40 min away; going back in the office 5 days is roughly 15% pay reduction and 18% increase in time (372 hours a year driving). How exciting to work 18% more for 15% less money...?!
I was recently hired as a hybrid employee with no speak of that changing anytime soon. Going back into the office is a pay cut. Guessing our merit increases will be measly and along with bonuses. There’s really no point in sticking around to find out. I would have never accepted this role with the recent changes Bill has made.
Traumatizing employees to weaken their resistance to hedge fund exploitation is inhuman. Toxifying the workplace to divide and conquer employees is the act of a saboteur. How can we be collaborative when we are being dictated to by an outsider, whose first loyalty is to a hedge fund tyrant's insatiable greed.
At bill’s pep rally for leaders, he announced that we didn’t deserve such high ICP’s in the past. Also, he’s been trash talking Nick Akins and saying he did a “terrible” job leading AEP. It’s time to get the f*ck out!!!
Company culture and employee morale are at all-time lows. Here are a few suggestions for this year’s culture action plans:
- Be the hero we all need right now. Turn AEPNow comments back on.
- Change ‘Ask Bill’ to ‘F Bill’. Bonus points if you add his home address for fan mail.
- Make Spotify’s billboard stating employees are not children the photo of the day every day.
- Have employee movie day at 1RP and play a certain Quentin Tarantino classic around the clock. Bonus points if everyone wears matching t-shirts.
Love to hear additional suggestions for this year’s culture action plan. Understand if most of these have implementation dates of March 17.
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13
Embody Virtue
Defend Liberty
Demand Equality
Define Justice
Vanquish Tyranny
Thus Live Our American Dream
@1nzr+1qB6FXi3 no you want it to be high as possible. Best is anything 1.xx, what we'll most likely see is 0.xx. If your salary is $100k, your base is 10%, and the multiplier is 1.5, your ICP is $15k. If it's 0.5, your ICP is $5k.
You want that number as large as possible. One year we had somewhere around 1.7 but those are days are over.
For ICP a multiplier of 1 means you should receive the % by your salary grade. Example, if you are a grade 8, ICP is 10% of your salary assuming the score/multiplier is 1. So let's say your grade 8 and your salary is 100,000. With a score of 1, you should be receiving around 10,000 gross. This figure may vary as some BUs have separate ICP criteria and your ICP can also be adjusted at your managers discretion for performance. In this example, If the ICP score is .88, then you receive .88x10,000 or 8,800 gross. The score ranges from 0 (no bonus) to 2 (maximum amount allowed). Ideally we want ICP score to be at 1 or more.
The ICP score is largely driven by our Earnings per Share. We have a EPS guidance range with the midpoint equating to an ICP score of 1. EPS alone accounts for about 70% of the overall score and there are other factors such as safety performance, strategic goal performance, etc. If you are an employee, you can search 2024 ICP on the AEPNow and find the ICP scorecard which gives a breakdown of how ICP performance is calculated.
Lasy year the ICP score was .57 - it was the lowest payout in probably the last 10 years or so. Previous years it has been above 1. Long story short, you generally want an ICP score above 1.
So wait a lower multiplier is better? This is too convoluted for me to understand
The "Carl Icahn hedge fund agenda" to impoverish employees and customers while further enriching the filthy rich is not well received. It is imperative we lobby our state legislatures and put an end to this hedge fund or-y of rabid greed. We are the many and they are the few. When we turn against them, their "agenda" and their political sycophants shall not save them from our virtuous and righteous indignation. This is a fight for the survival of our way of life and our American values. We cannot afford to fail.
I heard it’s .88 this year
If some stranger broke into your home and threatened you and your family's well being and lifetime of hard work, what would you do to protect your family and property? Bill is an unwelcome intruder, who broke into our home, attacked our family and started stealing what he never earned.