AKRON --- FirstEnergy's top executive says the company will continue to press Ohio lawmakers for new customer-paid subsidies for its nuclear power plants even though it may not own them in the future.

"I am going to continue to fight for this ... legislation because it is the right thing to do for the state of Ohio," Chuck Jones, president and CEO, told financial analysts Friday in a frank discussion about the company's future during a public teleconference to discuss second quarter financial results.

Jones also revealed that FirstEnergy is preparing to talk to creditors of its subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions, the company that owns the corporation's old, uncompetitive power plants, which have been losing money.

FirstEnergy Solutions' debt and the declining value of its power plants has made it a potential liability as it negotiates with its creditors amidst rumors of an eventual bankruptcy, and FirstEnergy has tried to distance itself from the subsidiary.

Jones revealed, however, that FirstEnergy itself has agreed to talk to the subsidiary's creditors.

"We always knew there would come a point in time when we would have these discussions with creditors," Jones told a Morgan Stanley analyst. "I think it would be in everybody's best interests if we come up with a mutually agreeable way to deal with the issues at FES."

FirstEnergy's overall earnings for the second quarter -- profits of $174 million on sales of $3.3 billion -- were well within analyst expectations and the company's earlier forecasts.

One reason is that FirstEnergy has recently won delivery rate increases in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Also, the company has been spending millions of dollars to upgrade both its long-distance, high-voltage transmission systems and its local delivery systems. Those investments come with a guaranteed rate of return.

As for the special, customer-paid charges to help Davis-Besse, Perry and Beaver Valley, Pa., nuclear power plants, Jones said he doubted anybody could operate them without special subsidies. The problem is that they cannot compete with gas turbine plants and, at times, with wind power.

"I'm not sure [they] will run unless there is something done either federally or by the state of Ohio to ensure they get a different financial return model," Jones said.

The company previously said the nuclear charges would increase customer bills by about 5 percent. Subject to periodic review by state regulators, the charges would run for 17 years.

Selling the nuclear plants is part of the company's overall plan "to exit the commodity-exposed generation business," Jones said.

In other words, if the company cannot have its power prices set by a state utility commission, it does not want to be in the generating business. Other parts of the business, the local distribution system and the long-distance high-voltage transmission system, are regulated, meaning rates are guaranteed.

Jones said the company is also continuing to close or sell power plants it acquired in Pennsylvania when it bought another utility, Allegheny Energy, in 2011. Like Ohio, Pennsylvania deregulated the generation side of its electric industry.

For example, FirstEnergy's Mon Power, a regulated utility in West Virginia, is moving to buy one of the former Allegheny Energy's last large coal-fired plants, the 1,300 megawatt Pleasant Power plant at Willow Island, W. Va., on the Ohio River, about 10 miles up-stream from Marietta, Ohio.

Jones also made it clear during the conference that FirstEnergy's campaign to persuade Ohio lawmakers to approve a nuclear plant subsidy would continue no matter what the U.S. Department of Energy recommends.

The Trump administration in April asked the DOE to figure out whether wind, solar and natural gas power plants are forcing the premature retirement of very large old coal and nuclear power plants, and whether those closings might de-stabilize the nation's high-voltage power grid.

Jones thinks the switch particularly to gas turbine power plants could create both national security and economic development disasters.

"We are taking the most sophisticated bulk electric system that exists anywhere in the world and putting it on top of a bulk gas system that is very unsophisticated.

"And that sets up a security risk if there were ever an attack on that bulk gas system, which does not have the redundancy that the bulk electric system has," Jones said.