The past two decades have seen R. Don Cash serve as a pillar of the business community, a leader of an industry giant, a point man for community involvement.
Not bad for a self-described "country boy, oil field trash."
Yet, as Cash brings to a conclusion a 20-year run as chief executive officer of Salt Lake-based Mountain Fuel Supply Co., later renamed Questar Corp., on Tuesday, he departs from a company that has grown to a powerhouse under his watch.
"He's been the steady hand at the wheel the entire time," said Keith Rattie, his successor. "And most Questar employees have never known a CEO other than Don Cash."
What those employees, and shareholders, and customers, may not know is that Cash has been at the helm as the company's net income grew from $30.1 million in 1982 to today's $158.2 million. The company's utility business has shrunk from 43 percent to 16 percent, despite the utility customer figures blossoming from 406,000 to 731,900.
It's a course that might have been expected of Cash, whose background in exploration and production at Amoco and Questar before becoming CEO has served him well as Questar expanded beyond its utility role.
"I'm most proud of the fact that people told me after I took the job that Mountain Fuel and Questar was too small, that there were too many other big guys out there, and with the cyclicality of the energy business, that this company wouldn't last. I had employees tell me that, former employees, retirees, the financial community. They also said regulators would put so much pressure on us that we wouldn't be able to afford to stay in some of these businesses," Cash said.
"I'm most proud that those people were wrong. We have survived. In fact, we're stronger now than when I took over. We did make it after all the people said we couldn't."
Cash remembers being "pretty green" and "scared to death" when he took over for B.Z. "Bud" Kastler. Cash was only 38 then, having been with the company for a few years.
"All I wanted to do was drill wells and build things, like compressor stations," Cash said.
Having turned down the job once, he said, "I didn't have enough nerve to do it again" when Kastler asked.
"I hired him because he was young, and I thought he had a future there. I was hoping it would be a long tenure," Kastler said.
"We were looking for a man with a broad range of experience, and he had been with us long enough to know our business, and he had been back east to meet with financial people.
And he was a petroleum engineer, and that was a direction — more exploration and production — where we wanted to go."
It's certainly not always been an easy ride for the tall glass of water that has never shaken — heck, never tried to shake — his Texas drawl. His move to CEO came in the wake of a proxy fight. Soon there were years of battles — eventually settled — over how much the utility customers should benefit from the company's drilling and exploration. That, known as Wexpro, led to a complete reorganization of the company.
Before the reorganization, the utility was the parent that had nonutility divisions. Questar became the holding company. The utility's share of the business began dwindling as exploration and production on the nonregulated side began its rise to prominence.
"The Wexpro situation involved a lot of name-calling, and things were serious," he said. "We almost lost the company. I made a pledge to myself then that this company would never get in that position again, and that's when we changed the whole organization."
Cash relied on pipeline mileage, number of customers, levels of reserves, storage capacity, gathering-system miles and other tangibles to gauge the company's strengths. The utility "never earned very well" but provided stability, especially when compared to the more exciting, but riskier, nonregulated ventures.
Cash at times downplays his role in keeping Questar going and at other times modestly acknowledges it.
"I've always flatly said we're not interested in selling out to somebody else, and you have to have somebody in place strong enough to say that," Cash said.
"Whenever I've looked at the company's future, I've always asked, 'Will the company be more prosperous and worth more money five years from now than it is today?' And every time I asked that question, I said, 'Yes, it will be.' I believed in the dream. I still do. We have some outstanding opportunities, and we're doing better than most folks."
His strategies, admittedly, have been conservative, and he wonders if Questar could have grown even bigger if he had taken more risks. But he said he never wanted to do anything that could ruin the entire organization.
"Trying to find gas in the ground wasn't as glamorous as developing a lot of trading capabilities as Enron did, but he stuck to game plan that said, 'We'll continue to develop reserves,' " said Harris Simmons, president and chairman of Zions Bank and a member of Questar's board of directors.
Few customers realize that Questar's exploration and production activities stretch from Canada to the Midwest, into Oklahoma and Texas, he said.
"And that will pay off for both the owners of the company and consumers for years to come."
The focus on E&P has made Questar a much more valuable enterprise, along with those activities being integrated with distribution, Simmons said.
"And that has, in no small measure, led to consumers in this state enjoying some of the lowest gas prices in the nation."
"Don," Rattie said, "has tried to steer a steady course through choppy waters, and he has done a good job doing that."
But as much as what the cold, hard numbers can reveal about a person's success in leading a company, to hear friends tell it, Cash is about more than just cash.
"I think Don's greatest legacy to Questar is on the soft side. It's his integrity," Rattie said. "Given the events of the past year, the Enron blowup in particular, the values of honesty and integrity which are deeply imbedded in this company's culture are a reflection of Don Cash, and those are gaining a new relevancy. Investors have grown weary of management spin-type puffery — we saw that with the Enron blow-up."
"He's a very principled guy," Simmons said. "In any meeting I've been in with Don Cash, No. 1 on his agenda was making sure he's doing business in a way that would never embarrass anyone associated with the company."
Kastler said Cash has integrity as well as a unique ability to get along with all types of people.
"With a company that size and that diverse, operating from Canada to Mexico, you have an awful lot of people," Kastler said. "The ability of a chief executive to relate to those people and extract the best out of them is something we were looking for. He's a very personable guy."
Cash maintains that sincerity, more than talent in speaking or writing, is the crux of getting messages through to employees, shareholders and customers. It's a key, he said, to their buying into corporate strategies.
"This company actually made me be a better man than I really am. It made me sit down and say, 'You've got to be like a preacher. You've got to walk the talk. You've got a lot of people watching you.' "
Not all the watchers have been pleased. Some Questar Gas critics still see the Wexpro battle as a bitter case of a company greedily wanting to reap the benefits of drilling operations while leaving utility customers to pay for dry holes. Some contend that the company should put more of its low-cost gas in the mix for utility customers in order to lower their bills, instead of getting richer selling it to others at a high profit.
Cash still sees the Wexpro situation as an opportunity lost, despite years of trying. He credits part of that to the fact that "people never have a warm feeling for utilities."
"It was a big fight, and the biggest regret I have is that I never did convince people that we really are one fine company with outstanding service and reliability. I never got that message across. People have always been focused on the last gas bill or last rate case. That's one of my biggest regrets."
Cash will turn 60 in June. He'll spend the next little while in sabbatical, traveling and tending to family matters in Texas. He will continue as chairman of Questar's board and will be a consultant to the company.
The "country boy, oil field trash" will leave behind day-to-day involvement in a company that is enjoying record earnings while also donating shareholder money — to the tune of more than $1 million annually — in community programs supporting education, arts and children's issues, especially the prevention of child abuse, plus an organization with about 500 employees volunteering to help their communities.
"He's turning over an organization that is strong, The people here are focused, and the strategies he's had in place over the last decade are working," Rattie said.
"Don's doing what most leaders would plan to do if they had the ability to choose, and that is to go out on top."
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com