Alliant Energy Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the Alliance Energy's conference call for second quarter 2020 results. This call is being recorded for rebroadcast. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Susan Gill, Investor Relations Manager at Alliance Energy. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I would like to thank all of you on the call and the webcast for joining us today. We appreciate your participation. Joining me on this call are John Larson, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Robert Durian, Executive Vice President and CFO. Following prepared remarks by John and Robert, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy's second quarter financial results and reaffirmed the consolidated 2020 earnings guidance issued in November 2019. This release, as well as supplemental slides that will be referenced during today's call, are available on the investor page of our website at www.alliantenergy.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you the remarks we make on this call and our answers to your questions include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risk that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, Matters discussed in Alliant Energy's press release issued last night and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, this presentation contains references to non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release and our time queue, which will be available on our website. At this point, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Sue. Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all staying safe and healthy. Thank you for joining us today as we highlight our solid results for the second quarter of 2020. I'll share a few notable stories from the quarter and then turn the call over to Robert as he recaps some of our regulatory, customer, and financial highlights. I'll start my comments with a focus on our recently issued corporate responsibility report. This year's update showcases many examples of our environmental stewardship, as well as our long-standing efforts to address the important social needs of the communities we proudly serve. On the environmental front, we were excited to announce that we achieved our 2030 goal of having 30% of our energy mix come from carbon-free renewable resources 10 years ahead of schedule. And we're not stopping there. Our customer-focused strategy continues to advance us toward a clean energy future that And our responsibility report has been updated with new and even more aggressive clean energy goals. These new goals are shown on slide two of the supplemental slides. Our report also highlights the great work of our employees to support our customers and communities. This is not new for Alliant Energy. It's part of how we do business. We continue to support our customers and communities as they respond to the ongoing demands of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. Our charitable foundation recently released a new wave of community grants, benefiting more than 230 nonprofit organizations across Iowa and Wisconsin. Our stated purpose to serve customers and build stronger communities is core to everything we do, and we're proud of the many ways we help to build stronger communities where we live, work, and raise our families. Now more than ever, the social part of our corporate responsibility is at the forefront. We are committed to partnering with our communities, working to understand and help address their needs. We act by providing financial support to agencies and nonprofit organizations that help our communities bridge gaps of social inequities and through programs that support food insecurity and housing, workforce readiness, environmental stewardship, and diversity, safety, and well-being. Our employees and retirees are a driving force in our communities. and I'm very proud to be part of a company that lives our values in so many ways. In a few moments, I'll turn the call over to Robert, who will address the trends we are seeing across our residential, commercial, and industrial customer bases as a result of the ongoing COVID pandemic. Our employees have made great progress in driving cost reductions and advancing our broader transformation efforts during the first half of the year while keeping a strong focus on safety and reliability. Turning to the execution of our strategy, I'll highlight progress we've made as we advance our clean energy vision. A key driver to achieving our goals is the continued successful advancement of new renewable energy sources, wind and solar. In May, we filed a certificate of authority with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin for 675 megawatts of new solar generation. Collectively, these solar projects are expected to create more than 1,200 local construction jobs, and once operational, will provide an estimated $80 million in local tax revenues over the next 30 years. In conjunction with our solar filing, we also announced our plans to retire our Edgewater Generating Station. Our efforts to transition our generation to a cleaner and more efficient fleet are not new. In fact, we've been on this path for over a decade. As we have in the past, we will live our values to care for others and do the right thing as we support the transition of impacted employees in the Sheboygan community. The expansion of our Wisconsin Renewable Resource Portfolio, as well as the decision to retire the Edgewater facility, was a result of a year-long process that involved working with key stakeholders and ultimately forming what we call our Clean Energy Blueprint. We have a similar process started in Iowa and expect to share the results of our Clean Energy Blueprint for our IPL business later this year. Speaking of Iowa, I'll also share that we recently announced an innovative partnership with the City of Decorah. The new project features a 2.5 megawatt battery storage facility to support distributed solar. This battery system will help us better serve the community and allow us to efficiently integrate a growing desire for distributed energy resources. And while a lot of great work is happening related to solar and energy storage, I also want to highlight American Wind Week, which kicks off next Monday. We are proud to be part of advancing wind energy and the many benefits it brings to our customers and rural communities. We remain on track to install an additional 280 megawatts of wind for our Iowa and Wisconsin customers by the end of this year. Our 130-megawatt Richland wind farm will be completed by the end of the third quarter, and our 150-megawatt Kossuth wind farm is 80% complete and will be placed into service in the fourth quarter of this year, making us the third largest owner-operator of regulated wind in the United States. To summarize, we remain committed to focusing on the health, safety, and well-being of our employees, customers, and communities, advancing our clean energy vision, ensuring our investments are well executed, efficient, and customer focused, and delivering consistent returns for our investors with a 5% to 7% growth rate and a 60% to 70% dividend payout ratio. Thank you for your interest in Alliant Energy.