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EXHIBIT 99.01
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Northern States Power Company Cautionary Factors
The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the Act) provides a
new "safe harbor" for forward-looking statements to encourage such disclosures
without the threat of litigation providing those statements are identified as
forward-looking and are accompanied by meaningful, cautionary statements
identifying important factors that could cause the actual results to differ
materially from those projected in the statement. Forward-looking statements
have been and will be made in written documents and oral presentations of
Northern States Power Company, a Wisconsin Corporation (NSP-Wisconsin). Such
statements are based on management's beliefs as well as assumptions made by and
information currently available to management. When used in NSP-Wisconsin's
documents or oral presentations, the words "anticipate", "estimate", "expect",
"objective", "outlook", "possible", "potential" and similar expressions are
intended to identify forward-looking statements. In addition to any assumptions
and other factors referred to specifically in connection with such
forward-looking statements, factors that could cause NSP-Wisconsin's actual
results to differ materially from those contemplated in any forward-looking
statements include, among others, the following:
- Economic conditions including inflation rates and monetary fluctuations;
- Trade, monetary, fiscal, taxation, and environmental policies of governments,
agencies and similar organizations in geographic areas where NSP-Wisconsin has
a financial interest;
- Customer business conditions including demand for their products or services
and supply of labor and materials used in creating their products and
services;
- Financial or regulatory accounting principles or policies imposed by the
Financial Accounting Standards Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission,
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and similar entities with regulatory
oversight;
- Availability or cost of capital such as changes in: interest rates; market
perceptions of the utility industry, or NSP-Wisconsin; or security ratings;
- Factors affecting operations such as unusual weather conditions; catastrophic
weather-related damage; unscheduled generation outages, maintenance or
repairs; unanticipated changes to fossil fuel or gas supply costs or
availability due to higher demand, shortages, transportation problems or other
developments; environmental incidents; or electric transmission or gas
pipeline system constraints;
- Employee work force factors including loss or retirement of key executives,
collective bargaining agreements with union employees, or work stoppages;
- Increased competition in the utility industry, including: industry
restructuring initiatives; transmission system operation and/or administration
initiatives; recovery of investments made under traditional regulation; nature
of competitors entering the industry; retail wheeling; a new pricing
structure; and former customers entering the generation market;
- Rate-setting policies or procedures of regulatory entities, including
environmental externalities, which are values established by regulators
assigning environmental costs to each method of electricity generation when
evaluating generation resource options;
- Social attitudes regarding the utility and power industries;
- Cost and other effects of legal and administrative proceedings, settlements,
investigations and claims;
- Technological developments that result in competitive disadvantages and create
the potential for impairment of existing assets;
- Other business or investment considerations that may be disclosed from time to
time in NSP-Wisconsin's Securities and Exchange Commission filings or in other
publicly disseminated written documents;
- Regulatory delays or conditions imposed by regulatory agencies in approving
the proposed merger with NCE.
NSP-Wisconsin undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any
forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future
events or otherwise. The foregoing review factors pursuant to the Act should
not be construed as exhaustive or as any admission regarding the adequacy of
disclosures made by NSP-Wisconsin prior to the effective date of the Act.
