NorthWestern Energy Group, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome everyone to the Northwestern Energy First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Webinar. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After those speakers remark, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key all over the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Travis Meyer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Audra. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Northwestern Energy Group's Financial Results Webcast for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. My name is Travis Meyer, and I'm the Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations Officer for Northwestern. Joining us on the call today are Brian Byrd, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Crystal Lail, Chief Financial Officer. They'll walk you through our financial results and provide an overall update on what great progress we've had this quarter. Northwestern's results have been released, and the release is available on our website at northwesternenergy.com. We also released our 10Q pre-market this morning. Please note that the company's press release, this presentation, comments by presenters, and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. As such, I'll direct you to the disclosures contained within our SEC filings and the safe harbor provisions included in the second slide of this presentation. Also note that this presentation includes non-GAAP financial measures and information regarding the pending merger transaction. Please note these non-GAAP disclosures, definitions, and reconciliations in the merger-related disclosures included in the appendix of today's presentation materials. This webcast is being recorded. The archived replay will be available shortly after the event and will remain active for one year. Please visit the financial results section on the website to access the replay. With those details behind us, I'll hand over the presentation to Brian Bird for his opening remarks.

Thanks, Travis. On our recent highlights for the quarter, we reported GAAP earning diluted EPS of $1.03 and a non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.31. We're affirming our 2026 earnings guidance range of $3.68 to $3.83. And we're also affirming our long-term rate-based EPS growth rate targets of 4% to 6%. From a merger progress perspective, I'm sure all of you listening have noted that we received shareholder approval of our pending merger with Black Hills and received approval of all proposals. And we've also put in place constructive settlements with each of our key interveners in Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota associated with the merger dockets. From a regulatory and legislative standpoint, we've had constructive wildfire legislation passed in South Dakota, and we recently submitted a large new low tariff proposal with the NPSC. Regarding data centers, we're happy to announce we signed another development agreement, this time with Quantica Infrastructure now for a total of three development agreements associated with data centers. And lastly, for dividend, we declared a dividend of 67 cents for share payable June 30, 2026, the June 15 record date. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to Crystal for our first quarter financial review.