Alliant Energy Corporation

Thank you for holding and welcome to Alliant Energy's second quarter 2025 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 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 second quarter financial results and reaffirmed our 2025 earnings guidance range. This release as well as an earnings presentation, will be referenced during today's call and are available on the investor page of our website at www. This presentation contains references to ongoing earnings per share, which for 2024 is a non-GAAP financial measure. References to ongoing earnings exclude material charges or income that are not normally associated with ongoing operations. The reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP measures is provided in the earnings release which is available on our website. At this point I will turn the call over to Lisa.

Thank you Sue. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. 2025 is shaping up nicely and positions us well to meet our 2025 operational and earnings objectives for the year. The Alliant Energy Advantage reflects our unwavering commitment to support economic growth in Iowa and Wisconsin by meeting our customers' evolving energy needs. Our bold commitment to accelerate near-term sustainable economic development and growth is already delivering clear benefits for our customers, communities, and shareholders, driving momentum that positions us for sustained, sector-leading growth. We're not just planning for growth, we're enabling it in real time. We have been clear on our ambitions to drive growth in the communities we have the privilege to serve, and we are beginning to see this materialize in a significant manner. Physical construction has now started in both Iowa and Wisconsin on three large-scale data centers. Our progress to date reflects a deliberate focus on creating solutions that benefit both new and existing customers as well as our investors. We have attracted and accelerated the onboarding of projects by securing length through a deliberate mix of new capital investments, market purchases, and strategic forward positioning of existing energy resources. Our commitment is clear to grow at the pace of our customers and communities, ensuring all customers benefit from economic development. Earlier today, QTS Centers, a Blackstone portfolio company, announced a planned $10 billion investment, the largest investment in Cedar Rapids history. Our partnership with the QTS Cedar Rapids Data Center is a clear demonstration of how we're delivering transformational growth in the communities we serve. Notably, QTS is also seeking to advance a multi-phase data center in WPL service territory in the greater Madison area. With an agreement in principle in place, we are continuing to make progress towards finalizing and executing definitive agreements. QTS has been working proactively with the community through public meetings to discuss their plans and will be seeking town, city, and county approvals. As I've said before, our focus is on creating cascading waves of growth and executing with discipline and precision every step of the way. We've also emphasized our commitment to transparency, sharing details on growth opportunities and projects that we believe our investors can count on and with a realistic line of sight into what's ahead our focus has been on reporting well-developed high confidence projects in contrast to reporting all early stage projects on slides four and five we provide a line of sight to our updated data center demand fueled by the progress we have made we continue to steadily expand our backlog of prospective customers and are engaged in advanced discussions to convert these opportunities into concrete growth, reinforcing the strength and momentum of our long-term pipeline. New load supported by signed ESAs will be included in our Q3 capital expenditure plan update. Incremental load growth beyond the 2.1 gigawatts already in our plan is expected to be primarily served by new energy resources. Turning to the recently passed budget bill, while it accelerates the phase out of certain clean energy tax credits, we're encouraged by the provisions that promote customer affordability and strengthen the support for renewable projects already in progress. As documented on slide six, under the budget reconciliation law, our current CapEx plan is intact. Transferability of renewable tax credits is intact. Our Iowa regulatory construct which enables us to earn our authorized return while growing to serve the needs of our customers and communities is not impacted and our customers and communities maintain benefits associated with the projects along with the tax credits. Our congressional delegations played a key role in securing these protections and we remain committed to working collaboratively with them and our industry partners as further Treasury guidance materializes. We expect the Treasury's guidance to reflect a pragmatic and constructive approach as it relates to the start of construction guidance. Under current start of construction guidance, we have safe harbored 100% of the energy storage projects in our capital plan. Safe harbored 750 megawatts of the 1200 megawatts of wind in our plan and we are confident in our ability to safe harbor the remaining 450 megawatts either directly or through a third-party developer as we have stated before we have very flexible resource planning processes in both states this positions us well to navigate if needed potential changes to the long-standing start of construction guidance and deliver cost-effective energy resources to meet the growing energy needs and timelines our customers expect. We continue to make significant progress on regulatory filings and approvals, which Robert will address in detail. As a result of these efforts and our strong execution capabilities, we are advancing key strategic capital projects. We completed construction of our first utility scale energy storage project at the Grant County Solar Site in Wisconsin. And by the end of the year, we expect to complete construction of an additional 175 megawatt energy storage and our Wisconsin Advanced Gas Path projects for two of the four units at Neenah and Sheboygan. As we grow alongside our customers, we plan to continue to propose and execute projects that drive efficiencies within our existing fleet, as well as adding new energy supply resources that strike the right balance between system reliability, efficiency, and customer costs. I could not be more excited about the direction of this company. At Alliant Energy, we're positioning ourselves for scalable, long-term growth unlocking the potential of our customers, our communities, and our investors. We are accomplishing this with a strong, aligned team, solving the utility industry's Rubik's Cube for reliability, resiliency, affordability, and growth, while maintaining the strong balance sheet our investors expect from us. Our commitment has been consistent and clear. We deliver win-win-win solutions without compromising one priority for another. That's how we create lasting value across all stakeholders. To the analysts and investors on the call today, thank you for your interest in our great company. When you invest in us, you're choosing a proven track record of consistency backed by industry-leading growth opportunities that drive long-term sustainable value. I will now turn the call over to Robert.