Alliant Energy Corporation

Thank you for holding, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Alliant Energy's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Susan Gill, Investor Relations Manager at Alliant Energy.

Good morning. I would like to thank all of you on the call and the webcast for joining us today. We appreciate your participation. With me here today are John Larson, Chair, President, and CEO, 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 third quarter and year-to-date financial results, narrowed and raised the midpoint of our 2022 earnings guidance range, and announced the 2023 earnings guidance, and common stock dividend target. It also provided our annual capital expenditure plan through 2026. This release, as well as an earnings presentation, which 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 that 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 Align Energy's press release issued last night and in 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 quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which is available on our website. At this point, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Susan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We continue to be on track for another solid year, with strong financial and operating results. I'll hit on the key headlines and then turn it over to Robert for additional details. I'll start with 2022. A combination of solid weather normalized sales, positive temperature impact, project execution, and our continued focus on cost management have us well positioned for another year of achieving our long-term guidance objective. As a result, we are increasing and narrowing our 2022 earnings guidance range. We are well positioned for 2022 to be the 13th year in a row of achieving our targeted 5% to 7% earnings growth objective. And turning to 2023, I'm pleased to share our earnings guidance and dividend target. We pride ourselves on consistency, and these targets demonstrate our commitment to our long-term 5% to 7% earnings growth objectives. Our 2023 earnings midpoint represents a 6% increase to our forecasted 2022 temperature normalized adjusted earnings. And our 2023 common stock dividend target is $1.81 per share, which is a 6% increase from the prior year. Our commitment to steady and predictable results has never been stronger. Another key headline is our updated capital investment forecast. We are adding $2.4 billion of investment compared to last year's plan. This is yet another indication of how our well-executed and transparent clean energy blueprint has us positioned for long-term growth. Our clean energy blueprint serves as our roadmap to deliver on our purpose, to serve customers and build stronger communities. It's not only well designed for success, but also flexible, allowing us to adjust and adapt to the needs of our customers and economic changes. One of the largest opportunities to add value for our customers is the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. Our success in advancing and executing our capital projects this year has us well positioned to take advantage of the many customer benefits from the IRA. An example of this was our fast pivot away from tax equity to full ownership of our solar projects. As we shared in the last call, we haven't taken our foot off the gas as we continue to execute on our large solar project portfolio. This positioned us well to take immediate advantage of the IRA, providing even greater benefits to our customers and value to our share owners. On our current solar and battery projects, our customers will see nearly $500 million of incremental net present value benefits as a result of the impacts from the IRA when compared to traditional ownership. We don't have to change our plans to take advantage of the IRA. It's a natural fit with our clean energy blueprint. Another area of focus is addressing the proposed MISO seasonal capacity construct. We've shared in previous calls how this has also impacted the retirement dates for some of our remaining coal facilities. We have always kept a balanced generation portfolio, and while the end state of our blueprint will not change, this new construct will advance our need for dispatchable and flexible generation, ensuring reliable service to our customers no matter the season. As we embrace these opportunities, we revised our capital expenditure plan which contributed to a solid 8% rate-based growth through 2026. Approximately one-half of our investments over the next four years will be in renewable generation and battery storage, a strong demonstration of our commitment to a clean energy future for our customers. Now, with our outlook for 2023 established, let me share some of the achievements during the last quarter. We are keeping pace on our projects within the Clean Energy Blueprint. Not only has this positioned us well to take advantage of the IRA, we are also well positioned for future investments. We have all 16 sites that make up our overall 1.5 gigawatts of solar additions across both Iowa and Wisconsin under site control. We also have the majority of generator interconnect agreements in place, and all solar panels are either under our control or under construction. Our 50-megawatt Bear Creek project went into service on time and within budget, and two more projects should be operational by the end of the year, including our 150-megawatt Wood County and our 50-megawatt North Rock projects. We also added two new battery storage projects, one in Portage, Wisconsin, and one in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I'm very proud of our teams that worked to make this all happen in some very challenging sourcing and economic times. I'm also pleased to share that we continue to see solid growth in both Iowa and Wisconsin. And for the fourth year in a row, we've been named a top utility in economic development by Site Selection Magazine. As I've discussed in the past, we invest in key industrial property locations to spur economic development and growth within the communities we serve. This past quarter, it was an honor to help celebrate the planned expansion of Wiffles Hybrids as they announced their expansion in Ames, Iowa. Our team was also busy positioning us for the next phase of our generation transformation and grid resilience. They have been identifying additional IRA opportunities, advancing our efforts to move our grid underground, and continuing our development efforts for future investments in new wind, repowered wind, solar, storage, and sustainable fuels. We continue to have a strong backlog of development to provide us with choices for our future investments. To cap off a great third quarter of solid results and execution, I reflect on how the intersection of the IRA and our clean energy blueprint has made such a tremendous impact for us. Alliant is well positioned to be one of the strongest beneficiaries of the IRA because we can put the IRA to work immediately to benefit both our shareholders and customers. through added rate-based opportunities, and lowered costs to customers. We're also well positioned to benefit from cash flow improvements through transferability of tax credits, and we're not subject to the corporate minimum tax in the near term. Before I close, a quick reminder that it's not too late to vote. And with Veterans Day coming up soon, I'd like to pass on a sincere thank you to all veterans, especially to the over 200 that are part of the Alliant Energy team and all military families. I thank you for your service and sacrifice. Robert and I look forward to sharing more details next week when we see many of you in Florida at the EEI conference. I'll now turn the call over to Robert.