Company: WELPM
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000107815-25-000105
Chunk: 2

Company: WISCONSIN ELECTRIC POWER CO
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 8
Chunk 2
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 as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current-period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of critical audit matters does not alter in any way our opinion on the financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Regulatory Assets and Liabilities - Impact of rate regulation on financial statements — Refer to Notes 7 and 24 to the financial statements

Critical Audit Matter Description

The Company is subject to regulation by state and federal regulatory bodies (collectively the “Commissions”) which have jurisdiction with respect to the rates of electric and gas distribution. Management has determined the Company meets the requirements under accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America to prepare its financial statements applying the Regulated Operations Topic of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Accounting Standard Codification. 

2024 Form 10-K59Wisconsin Electric Power Company

Table of Contents

Rates are determined and approved in regulatory proceedings based on an analysis of the Company’s costs to provide utility service and a return on, and recovery of, the Company’s investment in the utility business. Current and future regulatory decisions can have an impact on the recovery of costs, the rate of return earned on investment, and the timing and amount of assets to be recovered through rates. The Commissions’ regulation of rates is premised on the full recovery of prudently incurred costs and a reasonable rate of return on invested capital. Certain items that would otherwise be immediately recognized as revenues and expenses are deferred as regulatory assets and regulatory liabilities for future recovery or refund to customers, as authorized by the Company’s regulators. While the Company has indicated it expects to recover costs from customers through regulated rates, there is a risk that the Commissions will not approve: (1) full recovery of the costs of providing utility service, (2) full recovery of all amounts invested in the utility business and a reasonable return on that investment or (3) timely recovery of costs incurred.

We identified the impact of rate regulation as a critical audit matter due to the significant judgments made by management to support its assertions