American Electric Power Company, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Carly and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the American Electric Power fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Darcy Reese, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to American Electric Power's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. A live webcast of this teleconference and slide presentation are available on our website under the events and presentation section. Joining me today are Bill Furman, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Trevor Mahalik, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In addition, we have other members of our management team in the room to answer questions, if needed, including Kate Dixon, Senior Vice President, Controller, and Chief Accounting Officer. We will be making forward-looking statements during the call. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statement we make today. Factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially are discussed in the company's most recent SEC filing. Please refer to the presentation slides that accompany this call for reconciliation to gap measures. We will take your questions following opening remarks. I will now hand the call over to Bill.

Thank you, Darcy, and good morning and welcome to American Electric Power's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. I'm happy to be here with all of you. We are operating in a period of incredible transformation across our industry. marked by accelerating electrification, rapidly expanding AI-driven and industrial demand, and rising expectations for reliable and affordable energy solutions. These trends only accelerated in 2025 and continued into 2026. As we look to the future, AEP stands out among its peers as one of the fastest growing, high-quality, pure-play electric utilities strategically positioned in multiple high-growth regions. Let's begin on slides four and five of today's presentation. AEP is rooted deep in innovation, and we are ready to meet unprecedented customer demand across our impressive 11 state regulated service territory and beyond, resulting in significant infrastructure investment, which continues to drive our strong financial performance now and into the future. We are operating in an environment and time when scale matters more than ever, and we continue to leverage our size to mitigate supply chain risk and focus on having the resources necessary to meet this massive system demand and investment opportunity. Notably, we are deepening our engagement with customers, regulators, policymakers, and suppliers to align our long-term goals and achieve favorable outcomes. For example, we have key relationships with major gas turbine manufacturers securing over 10 gigawatts of capacity and have entered into a long-term strategic partnership with Qantas Services to strengthen and accelerate capabilities for 765 KV transmission infrastructure build out. Simply put, the AEP team has made significant progress in 2025. And as we look ahead, we have built a robust plan with a clear focus on operational excellence and accountability, supported by the strength and experience of our winning team. I'm very excited to share our progress with you today. Turning to slide seven and eight, I would like to first walk through our 2025 financial performance and share our outlook, then speak to our recent key accomplishments and continued focus on customer satisfaction and affordability. I will then hand things over to Trevor for a more detailed summary of our financial results and the growth trajectory of our business. Now on to our financial results. I'm proud of the dedication and accomplishments of the entire team over the past year. AEP has a long history of consistently delivering or exceeding our earnings guidance, and 2025 was no exception. We achieved fourth quarter 2025 operating earnings of $1.19 per share, bringing our full year 2025 operating earnings to $5.97 per share, which is above the top end of our guidance range. In October, we also increased our quarterly dividend to $0.95 per share. demonstrating our ability to deliver competitive and sustainable shareholder returns. In fact, total shareholder return for 2025 was 29%, one of the highest in the industry. AEP's execution-driven performance in 2025 has established a solid foundation from which we are reaffirming our 2026 full-year operating earnings guidance range of $6.15 to $6.45 per share. With the remarkable load expansion we are experiencing, today we are also reaffirming our premium long-term earnings growth rate of 7% to 9% for 2026 to 2030 with an expected 9% CAGR. We have a large but conservative $72 billion five-year capital plan yielding a 10% rate-based CAGR that continues to present incremental upside and is supported by a strong balance sheet. In short, We finished the year with positive momentum, and we are only just getting started. Later in the call, Trevor will walk through our fourth quarter performance and provide additional details about our financial growth outlook. As we have discussed, we are in the midst of a generational load growth phenomenon throughout our diversified service territory, especially in Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and Oklahoma. We now have 56 gigawatts of firm, incremental contracted load additions doubling the 28 gigawatts we reported just last fall. These gigawatts are not speculative, as they are all backed by signed customer agreements. However, meeting this demand must be done responsibly. It is critically important that costs associated with these large loads are allocated fairly and the right investments are made for the long-term success of our grid. AEP continues to work with federal and state leaders to quickly adopt reforms to streamline the connection of new energy resources to serve large loads and drive smart solutions to protect residential customers from extra costs. This builds on our progress over the last several years. We laid the groundwork two years ago when we secured commission approvals for data center tariffs in Ohio and large load tariff modifications in Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia. We now have pending terra filings in Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia. A summary of these terra filings can be found on slide nine of our presentation. This methodology is designed to help protect our existing customers from bearing the costs of grid improvements required to meet data center's energy demands. While this is good progress, additional measures must be taken to ensure that the infrastructure required to serve large loads is paid for by the customers who drive those needs. Beyond these efforts, we are also building on AEP's history of innovation. We continue to explore generation solutions for the benefit of our customers during this period of massive demand. We have previously talked about AEP's ongoing efforts to develop small modular reactors, or SMRs, in our service territory. We announced that we are participating in the early site permit process for two potential SMR locations in Indiana and Virginia, And we will, of course, only move forward with the appropriate returns and risk-mitigating structures. Additionally, last month we announced plans to purchase $2.65 billion of fuel cells that will be part of a generation facility expected to be located near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The facility includes a 20-year off-take arrangement with a high-quality investment-grade third-party customer. Transmission will be equally important for affordability and to ensure new generation is quickly and reliably connected to serve large loads. Our unmatched scale on the transmission side continues to be a defining advantage for AEP. As outlined further on slide 10, we own and operate nearly 90% of the 765 kV infrastructure in the United States. With the largest electric transmission system in the country, AEP is exceptionally well positioned as the utility partner of choice for customers who need consistent large load power. As a matter of fact, AEP was recently recommended for approval or awarded new 765 KV projects in PJM, SPP, and MISO, expanding our footprint even further. New transmission projects at our planned fuel cell facility in Wyoming reinforce AEP's growth trajectory. representing opportunities that include approximately $5 to $8 billion of confirmed or endorsed incremental generation and transmission projects. This is additive to our current $72 billion five-year capital plan just announced last October. Let me now touch on the progress we are making on the legislative and regulatory fronts for the benefit of our customers and communities. We remain focused on reducing the gap between our authorized versus actual ROEs. In 2025, we achieved an earned ROE on the regulated business of 9.1%, up 30 basis points from two years ago with detailed plans to continue the improvement. Our successful approach of listening closely to state leaders and aligning with their needs has resulted in the passage of improved legislation and the achievement of positive, balanced regulatory outcomes that benefit both our customers and investors. Our continued execution is evident through several recent milestones, all detailed in the appendix of today's presentation, including broader regulatory accomplishments achieved in 2025. I'd like to highlight a few of these key milestones. Legislation that reduces regulatory lag was approved in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas. INM achieved approval on a generation resources filing, enabling targeted resource additions through an efficient, streamlined process. Base rate cases in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Ohio were approved or settled with additional new base rate cases recently filed in Oklahoma and Texas. Kentucky Power's investment in our Mitchell plant was approved, extending interest in its energy and capacity beyond 2028. And in West Virginia, we continue to work with leaders at all levels of the state on fair financial returns as the state's energy strategy aims to attract more capital investment and triple electricity generation to 50 gigawatts by 2050. While there's no statutory timeline for the Commission to rule on APCO's reconsideration filing made last September, we expect a decision soon. Affordability is at the heart of our regulatory approach, and as summarized on slide 11, we are taking decisive action to keep customer bills as economic as possible. We are building on efforts to support incremental load growth with innovative rate design, while also mitigating residential rate impacts through our focus on O&M efficiency and effective financing mechanisms such as securitization. As we invest in this electric infrastructure growth cycle and assign the appropriate cost to new large loads, we remain focused on protecting residential customers from increased costs. To finish up, we are seeing rapid change in our industry as well as increased need and demand from our customers and communities. We have a clear strategy, a strong financial foundation, and a team that knows how to deliver. all coming together to help us capitalize on the unprecedented opportunities ahead for the grid. I am dedicated to AEP's vision of improving customers' lives with reliable, affordable power. I am also committed to leading AEP for many more years to come, and I look forward to working with our incredible team. We will continue to execute at an unmatched pace of play on behalf of our stakeholders to drive growth, serve our customers, and create value for our investors. I will now turn the call over to Trevor, who will walk us through fourth quarter financial performance and provide more details surrounding our growth.