PG&E Corp. CEO Patti Poppe last week reiterated her call for broad reforms to California’s wildfire liability system and said her team might push to spin out or sell the company’s gas utility so that it can better attract capital.

Speaking after Oakland-based PG&E reported third-quarter profits of $776 million on revenues of nearly $6.2 billion, Poppe said her team remains focused on the company attaining investment-grade status and the much lower borrowing costs it would enable. She and other PG&E executives and directors formally launched a strategic review early last month in the wake of lawmakers not passing comprehensive reforms to the Golden State’s wildfire liability mechanisms.

At the time, Poppe and CFO Carolyn Burke said they were cutting $2 billion from PG&E’s capital spending plan for 2027 and said they would examine options to improve the company’s borrowing situation. Those, they said, could include more changes in spending priorities as well as changes to PG&E’s legal structure.

On Oct. 22, Poppe sketched out one possible scenario under the latter approach. Pointing out that all of PG&E’s units are affected in the debt markets by the company’s higher exposure to wildfire risks, she singled out the gas utility, which has 4 million customers across its service area.

“That [the division is paying higher financing costs] seems like an issue that should be resolved one way or another,” Poppe said. “Whether it’s resolved through policy reform, which would be great. And if not there, then would we unlock that value and lower borrowing costs for our gas customers through a regulatory-approved spin or sale or separation of some kind?”

Answers to questions such as that one should arrive by next summer at the latest, Poppe said. Progress by lawmakers on broader reforms that would limit the risk to PG&E – as well as Southern California Edison parent company Edison International and, on a smaller scale, San Diego Gas & Electric owner Sempra – could accelerate that timeline, PG&E’s leaders told analysts and investors.

Poppe also said that significant changes to how PG&E is organized, run and financed are possible even if the California legislature finds a path toward significant reforms that would cap utilities’ exposure to fire damages.

“We are thinking about that as we do all of this analysis and we see the value of our assets and the incredible people who operate them and the benefits to customers,” she added. “We do know that the fastest way to unlock value is policy reform. And so if that were to occur here in the near term, we’d be thinking hard about the scope and scale of the strategic review. But obviously, we’re learning a lot about where we think the full potential of our businesses are.”

Shares of PG&E (Ticker: PCG) fell about 5% in the days following executives’ Q3 report and conference call, closing last Friday at $12.63. But they rose nearly 2% to $12.85 on Oct. 26. Over the past six months, however, they are still down more than 20%, a drop that has cut the company’s market capitalization to about $38.6 billion.