Thank you, Joy, and thank you to the entire membership for the opportunity to present the financial report for your cooperative for the year-end of. This report does include the consolidated financial results for Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation. As well as the process of subsidiaries, Blue Ridge Energy LLC and Ridge Link LLC. When we talk about 2020, we certainly hear the word challenges. Our cooperative members certainly felt a lot of challenges during 2020. As you've heard from our president, the cooperative's overall vision is to make life better for those member-owners that we serve. In keeping with the cooperative's vision, the cooperative quickly responded to the pandemic, by suspending disconnections early on and starting the In This Together campaign that you've heard the others speaking about today.

Blue Ridge has such a wonderful region and membership that we serve and everyone came together to help each other during this time of need. While 2020 was full of challenges, I'm happy to report that strong financial results continued through your cooperative and the associated subsidiaries throughout the year. The cooperative's asset base ended in 2020 at $474 million, with the member equity ending at $183 million, which equates to 39% of the total asset. This is right in line with the ratio we'd like to see for this benchmark. Given the financial stability, Blue Ridge was able to return $5.5 million of the equity back to you, our membership. This year, during the capital credit retirement process, that this occurred last month of May. 

The cooperative has also been able to continue without a rate increase in 2020. I'm happy to report once again, we'll be able to do that throughout this year, and we don't have a rate increase plan for 2021. Certainly, welcome news as we come out of this pandemic this year. Another relatively warm year in 2020, as far as your operations go, resulted in lower kilowatt hour sales and lower propane gallon sold as compared to 2019. Obviously, the pandemic did play a role in our sales volumes, both from kilowatt hour sales and from the gallon sold of propane and fuels. We did see a shift from commercial sales to more residential sales. I know many of us were staying at home more in 2020. The electric kilowatt hour sales were down by approximately 3% compared to 2019.

With propane and fuel, we sell gallon sales down by about 8%. Market conditions did remain stable throughout the year for both electric and propane and fuels. The cooperative continues to implement initiatives through the Work Smart program to provide for cost containment and expense reductions. As per Ridge Link, the for-profit subsidiary, financial growth continues, as the company expand its footprint and the customer-base grows. The two subsidiaries together contributed $3.2 million in net benefit, the Blue Ridge Electric University in 2020. Over the year I talk about meter growth, and how flat we have seen meter growth in the last several years, and it's been a challenge for us.

However, I'm happy to report that we saw a flat up-kick in this growth in the trends that we saw in 2020 compared to the years where I've been reporting flat results. This, and along with the continued focus on cost savings, the strong subsidiary performance have all contributed to resulting in a strong overall financial result for your cooperative. For 2020, the total margins were almost $11 million. As Joy mentioned, you can find more details of the financial results for 2020 and the annual report that's published this month in Carolina Country, as well as through a link on our website. Thank you.