Evergy, Inc.

and affordability benefits for our customers and communities over the long term. I speak for the entire leadership team in saying that we are excited about the future at Evergy and are deeply committed to successfully executing our business plan and delivering consistent results for our customers, communities, employees, and shareholders.

And with that, we will open up the call for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session.

As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Nicholas Campanella of Barclays. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for all the updates. Morning, Nick.

Good morning, Nick.

Hopefully you can hear me.

We can.

Hey. Yeah. So, hey, I know I just – Brian, thanks for the clarity on, you know, it looks like this 500 megawatts is worth about 50 basis points of growth to the rate-based CAGR. So you're pointing people more towards 12. I know you kind of talked about 250 basis points of lags. So it just seems like you could be well above nine here. Is there anything that you would kind of flag that's an offset to kind of that basic walk?

Yeah, Nick, thanks for the question. And I think you interpreted exactly what we were trying to communicate. There's a lot of great momentum. These are signed ESAs with great counterparties with minimum bills that just give us tremendous line of sight. And so it sounds like you're hearing what we want you to hear, which is confidence that not only can we exceed 8% in those out years, but it's trending towards the math you just described.

Okay, yeah, sorry to be naive there.

And then I know you've talked about executing one more ESA in 2026, and you have this bucket of one to one-half gigawatts into the 2030 window of higher probability. Could you just expand on how many customers that's made up of?

So, Nick, we don't break out the customer piece, but you can have a sense for how large these customers typically are by the load. You just analyze the load impacts of the five ESAs that we've signed. So there's a range of sizes. Some folks are even larger, but there's a range there that's reflected. If you look at our five, they're generating a peak in the 2.4 gigawatt range. And I'll describe the opportunity set. It's pretty robust across especially the Tier 1 and Tier 2 categories. There's some natural advantages that come with expansion opportunities because you already have assigned ESA, you know, where the site is. We're working with some known parameters, but we also have some very interesting discussions in the Tier 2 category. And, of course, we're not going to lose sight of the Tier 3 as well. A little more creative solutions required for Tier 3. That's likely to be primarily beyond 2030, but we're excited about each bucket. But the most promising is always, of course, the expansion opportunities where you've already got that relationship and you've already got an ESA in place.

Okay, great.

And then just one last confirmation on this new kind of Outlook, you're going to roll in some additional capital, it looks like, and you have an increase in the episode of debt. Just on the new role, how are you thinking about that communication around equity in 2030?

Hey, Nick, this is Brian again. Yes, so for capital updates, it's still where we've described it before. When we updated our capital updates, investment plan back in February, we funded that with about 37% equity. So the incremental capital was around 37%. We generally have given a range of 40% to 50% assumption on that going forward. So I think that still applies here.

And Nick, as Brian mentioned in his remarks, as a result of the additional ESA, the ESA amendments and the we reach around the affordability benefits we can provide by flowing back nuclear PTCs over three years. Our FFO to debt metrics have strengthened over the plan, so we're in that 14 to 15 percent range and then trending up in that range, particularly as new customers come online back after the plan.

Thank you. Thank you, Nick.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Julian Dumoulin-Smith of Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, team. How are you guys all doing? Good morning, Julian.

Hey, Julian. Good morning.

Hey, hey. So unfortunately, I'm going to follow the same direction as Nick here. Hopefully, that's okay here. But if you can, obviously, you've got these five ESAs in hand. How do you think about latitude for six and onwards? And what I'm getting at here is how do you think about spare capacity versus transposing incremental ESAs into further generation and supply resources of various flavors? I just want to understand sort of the alignment. When you see these next announcements, how much more capital intensity there might be with that? And then also how you think about sort of the cadence if you have used up

bulk of your capacity how you would set expectations on this front again obviously i'm very cognizant of how you just described things a moment ago yeah i appreciate that julian and it's and it's an insightful question because not every additional esa is going to have the exact formulaic impact on capital because we um even if you're you're going to do some good math and you'll see it okay given the amount of megawatts we added to our peak load and we've got robust improvement in the in the amount of capital we're describing that's rate based growth that goes from 11 1⁄2 to approximately 12. Some cases, if you add ESAs, it'll be in that range, but maybe a little more capital impact. What I would emphasize is that on our last call, we signaled our confidence that we'd sign one more ESA, and we've announced that ESA here on this call. So on this call, we're also announcing our confidence that we'll sign at least one additional ESA this year. We have tried to be thoughtful about the long lead time equipment from turbine capacity to the things you need on the T&D side to be in place and have basically the equipment available so that we can be able to meet that demand that we see. We're not going to meet everything in our pipeline, but we're confident in the expression that we had today that we'll sign at least one additional ESA. We've got turbine reservations beyond what's needed from the ESA, so we have announced We continue to work with customers to be responsive to their needs, and it's typically around the transmission and generation capacity side. So we've been purposeful in thinking about our queue and being positioned to continue to grow. So I described that if we have additional ESAs, as we expect to have at least one, that will have an impact on the capital plan. It will create some more upward bias and across the board. It will be under the ESA framework, so that will have all the protections and the premium rate that comes along with the LLPS tariff. But we've got high confidence that we're not done. The team's done tremendous work. We're pleased with how attractive our region is to these large customers. We'll continue to work with them to find the right locations for those opportunities. We've got execution, of course, as we bring the large customers online. But we're excited about the momentum. We really expect a continuum.

Excellent. And maybe just, Brian, just follow up on that. How do you think about ATM or block? As the cumulative capital accelerates here, how do you think about funding it or pre-funding it? We've seen some companies talk about this in recent days. Curious on your latest.

Thanks, Julian. Our equity issuance plan for now is unchanged. It's $700 to $900 million per year from 2026 through 2029. Still no needs in 2030 as our credit metrics just become credit stronger and stronger throughout the forecast period. So that's $3.3 billion in the aggregate. For 2026, we've already priced $125 million. For our remaining need in 2026, we have no plans currently for block issuance, as our needs are easily addressable through our ATM program. So, you know, basically, we plan to dribble it out as we go through 2026.

Excellent. Hey, thanks for the details, guys. All the best, all right? We'll see you soon.

Thanks, Julian. See you soon. Thanks, Julian.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Char Peraza of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Hi, team. Thanks. Actually, this is Andrew Cadavy on for Char. Hi, Andrew. Good morning. Good morning. On the amended ESAs, was there a step up in the amount of final load you'll be serving, or is this just a change in the rank profile? And then can you offer any insight into what spurred that step up?

Sure, Andrew. You know, if you look at, in our material, we try to provide a sense, we'll give you a really good view of how the total load has changed in slide 13, so it's in Ryan's section. So we're actually detail the megawatt served each year for our total of our LPS and our non-LPS customers. So you'll see that the peak demand from these customers relative to last quarter has gone up to 3,000 megawatts, and it was 2,400 last quarter. So that's a cumulative increase of 600 megawatts. That's the impact of both the amended ESAs and the new ESA. I think it's fair to say that the new ESA is the main driver of the cumulative increase. Some of the amendments are higher levels over the interim period. So a lot of the predominant impact of the higher peak is from the new ESA. The logic for the amended ESAs is that these customers had a high appetite for basically as, I won't say as much as we could provide, but that wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say as much as we could provide. So we identified an ability to serve them at higher levels. Those customers were interested in doing that. Under the framework of the existing ESAs, we made those amendments. So it was a

a mutual solution to help serve a customer need that we were happy to to be able to serve great thank you and then can you give us a little detail on what's included in and what what drove the the nine cents in other tailwind on bucket uh and the other bucket on side 11. yeah hey andrew it's brian you know there's there's a few items in there um you know our our

COLI, so COLE, Company Owned Life Insurance Proceeds, added about $0.03 year over year. We had some incremental power marketing revenues that were also a bit higher than prior year. And lastly, our ETR is lower than prior year. So, you know, altogether, a modest portion of this $0.09 is favorable to our original plan, but a lot of it's just budgeted activity.

Great. Thanks. I'll leave it there.

Great. Yeah, we've got, as we reaffirmed, we're There was real mild weather this start to the winter, but we're pleased with the start to the year, delivered solid results, and reaffirmed our guidance for the year.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Sullivan of Wolf. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning. Hey, Michael. Hey, David. On the regulatory side, Maybe if you could just give us a sense of potential to settle the Missouri case this year. And then you seem to be kind of like setting the stage for where rates could be going at Missouri West. When do you plan to file there next? And what is the rate trajectory going to look like after it's been kind of so depressed in recent history?

A lot there, Michael. So good questions on the Metro case. The last few cases we filed in both states, we've been able to reach settlements, so we're certainly going to be working towards getting our constructive solution with staff, OPC, and other stakeholders in Missouri. They won't file their testimony until June, so the settlement conference comes later towards the fall timeline, so more to come on that. Those settlement discussions actually follow a schedule in Missouri, so I noted that in the script when the actual dates are for the settlement conference, so It'll actually, the schedule is after even our next quarterly call, so see where that goes. But again, we've had good progress in the last few rate cases in both states in reaching settlements. And I'll note that in our metro jurisdiction, rates actually went, base rates went down in our last rate case, which was after a four-year stay out in Missouri. So the trajectory in metro has been terrific in terms of the overall rates being much, the trajectory has been far lower than the impacts of inflation. And that affordability focus is one we're going to continue to have. So Missouri West, the cadence that we've had there is typically every other year or so. That would put us on a timeline to file a case sort of back part of this year, early next year. And I'll just reiterate the remarks I made regarding affordability in Missouri West. So overall, for the significant majority of our customers, residential customers, we expect to be in line with their blow inflation. Missouri West, we do expect is going to be a little higher inflation over the next five years. but manageable over the long term to that inflationary level. And that's really a result of Missouri West having a level of infrastructure investment that's lower than other jurisdictions. It's more exposed to market power trends. So when there have been price spikes, for example, during winter storm Uri, or when there were fly-ups in natural gas prices in 22, and then actually in January this year, too, that jurisdiction is a little more susceptible. So it needs that infrastructure investment. It's got by far the lowest rates in our system as well. So the jurisdiction has benefited from the lower investment, but eventually we need to make sure they've got adequate capacity. So there will be a level over inflation over the next five years, but over the long term, we expect to be in that range of inflation. And we really know the Missouri West will benefit from these investments, these needed investments for decades to come. So that's how I describe it for that jurisdiction. It's currently our smallest. It's got very robust low growth. So the good news about the LLPS tariff is that it's got a premium rate. So Missouri West, we expect to grow 10% to 11% per year in sales growth. That gives a lot more kilowatt hours over which to spread those investments that we're making. That's helping to moderate that rate increase trajectory. So it's a really great situation in Missouri West, which if we didn't have the large load growth, we would be needing to make this investment, but we wouldn't have the same kind of incremental sales or premium customer to spread it over. So I'll leave it at that, Michael. Okay, that's very helpful, David. Thank you.

And then just in terms of when you're signing these ESAs with maybe some of the non-A-rated counterparties, like how important is visibility into ultimately having a hyperscaler off-taker? I think you mentioned this most recent one. We should know more in the next couple of months and then I kind of go back to the one with Beal from last quarter. Where does that kind of stand? So, yeah, just if you could give us a feel for how important the visibility to a hyperscaler is.

So it's an important consideration, Michael, no doubt about it. The sophistication of the counterparty, their knowledge of how to bring it together, their ability to line up those end-use customers. The LLPS tariff has a set of collateral and credit requirements that every customer has to meet. in addition to having confidence as to who their off-taker is. So we're not announcing the counterparty today, though we did note that it's a premier developer. It actually does have a strong corporate rating, BBB+. But all of our customers have to meet the credit and collateral requirements that are in there. So if there's not a parent with an investment grade rating in the system, there's got to be letters of credit that follow the terms of the LPS. So we, in our ESA discussions, The counterparty situation, making sure we've got the right setup in terms of counterparty and credit is a key part of every discussion is how I describe it. Now, of course, we have two Googles. Googles are counterparty for two of the data centers, Meta for another. So those are companies with capitalization levels that I can't all conceive of in the multi-trillions. But with developers that have the strong offtake with hyperscalers, they're also great counterparties, but they all have to meet the credit and collateral requirements in the OLPS.

Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

You bet. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Michael.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Fremont of Idenburg. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning. Great quarter. I was curious if we could get a sense of, on slide 13, what would be the end date in terms of the 3,000 megawatts for peak demand?

So obviously we haven't laid that out, but I would describe it as it goes into the, not quite out to the mid-2030s, but it goes out well into the 2030s. And you'll see that we've got an additional 800,000 megawatts where it will continue to expand. So it's a robust growth rate. well into the 2030s. And, of course, the pipeline that we have, a lot of those discussions are focused on the 2030 and beyond timeframe. So we feel very confident about the growth rate being sustained in that timeline, not only from the signed ESAs, but also from the customer discussions that are underway.

And then I guess I'm assuming that most of the – all of that increase is based on the new contracts. Has – The end year changed significantly from the fourth quarter to the first quarter disclosure.

When you say end year, you're talking about is a general timeline when folks peak load? Has that changed materially for the existing ESAs? No. And the new ESA is generally in line in terms of the timeline overall in terms of when they're ramping up. There's a folks are, it's a historic opportunity, so folks are generally on a timeline that moves pretty fast. It's still well into the 2030s, but that timeline hasn't changed significantly, Paul.

And I think we're using like a five-year assumption. Is that sort of reasonable to ramp to full load?

That's right, Paul. And these five ESAs, they start in years from 2026 through 2028, so Some of the 2028 ESAs go into 2032, for example. Yeah, hopefully that helps.

Generally, the LPS is a five-year ramp rate provision and 10- to 12-year peak provision. So that's kind of embedded in the structure of the tariff.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks, Paul.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to David Campbell for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, Dana, and I want to thank everyone for joining our call today.

This concludes the call. Have a great day.

Thank you. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.