Alliant Energy Corporation

relation 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 Lisa Barton, President and CEO, and Robert Durian, Executive Vice President and CFO. Following prepared remarks by Lisa and Robert, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy's first quarter financial results and reaffirmed our 2025 earnings guidance range. We also updated our capital expenditure and financing plans for years 2025 through 2028. This release, as well as earnings presentation, will be referenced during today's call and 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 risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters discussed in Alliant Energy's news release issued last night and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Lisa.

Thank you, Sue. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. 2025 is off to a strong start. I'm pleased to share meaningful progress supporting both our near-term and long-term objectives, clear evidence of the strength, resilience, and adaptability of our strategy and business model. Our first quarter results delivered more than 25% of our earnings guidance midpoints. and we are positioned to achieve our 2025 earnings objectives while advancing our key strategic priorities, positioning us well for the year. Our commitment to our customers, communities, investors, and employees remains at the heart of everything we do. As I've mentioned in previous calls, we are relentlessly focused on supporting economic development and growth in our states. And today, I'm pleased to provide meaningful and exciting updates supporting our development milestones, first quarter achievements, and share details on our updated capital expenditure plans as we advance our growth strategy. I will then turn the call over to Robert to provide additional details related to our quarterly financial performance, risk management efforts, as well as our updated financing plans and regulatory matters. Achieving scalable growth in today's complex environment is akin to solving Rubik's Cube. It demands precision, agility, and a clear understanding of how every move influences the bigger picture. We are simultaneously solving all sides of our own Rubik's Cube, addressing customer needs, supporting economic development and growth in our states, collaborating with key stakeholders, and delivering sustainable investor returns. Let me recap our investment growth timeline over the past six months. In November, we announced two energy supply agreements with data center companies locating in the Big Cedar Industrial Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, adding an initial 1.1 gigawatts of data center demand for what we refer to as the first phase at Big Cedar. The corresponding capital plans released last November represented a 20% increase from the prior year and included the additional capacity resources needed to serve the first phase at Big Cedar and to adapt to MISO accreditation changes. We have continued our strong momentum in support of our economic development efforts this quarter by solidifying the resources needed for a second phase for one of our data center customers at Big Cedar, which is an additional 800 megawatts of demand, executing a new energy supply agreement with a data center customer in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and reaching an agreement with one of our Iowa data center customers to use existing capacity to serve them earlier, increasing our forecasted peak load in 26 and 27. The Alliant Energy Advantage is our commitment to help grow the economies of Iowa and Wisconsin and meet the needs of our customers by being as creative and adaptive as possible to align with their desired timelines. To summarize our recent success on this front, we now have three major data center developments with fully executed ESAs totaling 2.1 gigawatts of demand, which represents a greater than 30% increase in our peak demand. We're accelerating our load ramp for one of the two data centers at Big Cedar using existing resources. We're pursuing additional growth opportunities, positioning ourselves and our states for meaningful and sustainable long-term growth. On slide four, we provide our updated demand projections used to develop our capital expenditure plan. If actual demand exceeds the current estimated demand in our plan, or if we sign additional energy supply agreements, we would serve any incremental load through a combination of existing or new resources, short-term market purchases, and or load response. To help investors and stakeholders navigate the complexity of growth announcements, we focus our reporting exclusively on customer loads supported by fully executed electric service agreements. backed by substantial customer commitment to ensure our growth is highly credible and sustained. These advancements in economic development and growth have led to our CapEx update reflecting a nearly 26% increase from where we were 18 months ago, as shown on slide five. This translates into a 2024 to 2028 forecasted investment CAGR of nearly 11%. WITH SIGNIFICANT ENERGY RESOURCE INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES EXTENDING BEYOND 2028, AS PROFILED ON SLIDE 6. IN AGGREGATE, OUR FOUR-YEAR CAPEX PLAN FOR 2025 THROUGH 2028 INCREASED BY APPROXIMATELY $600 MILLION FROM OUR NOVEMBER 2024 UPDATE. The updated resource plan behind the CapEx plan strikes the right balance in optimizing existing resources and extending value at existing sites, supporting reliability and affordability, utilizing short-term capacity agreements and load response to accelerate economic development, and adding new generation to grow alongside our customers in a responsible manner allowing us to confidently scale new energy resources. Our efforts to drive community development and enhance our growth trajectory encompasses data centers as well as current and prospective commercial and industrial customers. I am pleased to report that there continues to be strong interest in locating and growing in our service areas, both in Iowa and Wisconsin. Through disciplined planning and proactive execution, we have positioned our company customers and investors for success in an uncertain macroeconomic environment. The capital plan update reflects proactive planning and flexibility, allowing us to lean into new natural gas investments, invest in our existing generation and distribution systems to support resiliency, reliability, and reduce risk in the face of policy uncertainty. New natural gas resources provide reliable and dispatchable capacity resources that complement our robust renewable fleet. Investments in our existing generation resources, such as our advanced gas projects in WPL and WPL's extension of the use of Edgewater and Columbia generating stations until the end of the decade, provides the additional reliability to meet growing demand and is responsive to the evolving MISO resource adequacy requirements. Lastly, extending the timing of some of our renewable and battery investments allows us to reduce risks related to tariff and tax policy uncertainty, while also lengthening our capital expenditure plan into the future, strengthening our position to deliver financial consistency over the long term. With the energy supply agreements executed for our three data center customers, our attention is now focused on obtaining regulatory approval of the individual customer rates or ICRs. The IUC is currently reviewing an ICR contract filed earlier in the year for one of our data center customers in Iowa. The second Iowa ICR contract will be filed this quarter reflecting an accelerated load ramp. And late last month, we filed an ICR for the Beaver Dam Data Center in Wisconsin. As we've highlighted in previous calls, we are committed to ensuring all ICRs achieve a win-win-win for existing customers, for new customers, and our share owners, which will be demonstrated in these confidential filings. New data center loads are expected to boost energy sales This increase in sales will help distribute fixed costs and transmission expenses across a larger customer base, contributing to more stable and manageable rates for the customers we have the privilege to serve. Alliant Energy operates in business-friendly states that are well-positioned for regional growth and economic development, and we are proud to partner with our communities to turn growth potential into real long-term impacts. Our collaborative partnership with regulators, policymakers, and local communities enables us to deliver successful outcomes. I'm proud of our team's proactive and impactful engagement, which serves as the cornerstone of our success, delivering meaningful outcomes and greater value for all our stakeholders. Alliance Energy is here to support not only the customers we currently serve, but also to ensure we are supporting the needs of future customers. and enabling community growth across our service territory. Before I turn the call over to Robert, I would like to tackle head-on questions regarding our strategy in the event the Inflation Reduction Act or IRA is repealed or if tax credits are scaled back. Renewable generation and energy storage tax credits have fueled economic growth and onshoring. Eliminating the tax credits would unfortunately and unnecessarily increase costs for customers. Our delegations understand how valuable tax credits and transferability are to Alliant and our customers, and we believe they will advocate for a balanced, careful approach to any legislative changes. Iowa's wind resources are among the best in the country, and our customers are benefiting from those investments. We will continue to take an all-of-the-above approach in new generation resources, which includes a mix of wind, batteries, and natural gas to ensure we maintain a balanced and diverse energy resource mix. Active management of our CapEx and resource plans means we have taken the prudent and proactive approach of safe harboring wind and energy storage projects. As a result, 100% of the renewable and energy storage CapEx in our plan is currently safe harbored through 2028. And as we continue to execute our strategy, we'll continue to proactively de-risk our strategy and remain well positioned to quickly adapt to a dynamic environment. In closing, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to our dedicated team of employees and for their unwavering commitment to our purpose of serving customers and building stronger communities. Your hard work and dedication are the backbone of our operational success and the driving force behind our strategic progress. I will now turn the call over to Robert.