Xcel Energy Inc.

Hello and welcome to Xcel Energy third quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Melissa and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad to register your question. Questions will only be taken from institutional investors. Reporters can contact media relations with inquiries and individual investors and others can reach out to investor relations. If you require assistance at any point, please press star followed by zero and you will be connected to an operator. I'll now turn the call over to Paul Johnson, Vice President, Treasury and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Xcel Energy's 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Call. Joining me today are Bob Frenzel, President, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Brian Van Abel, Executive Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer. In addition, we have other members of the management team in the room to answer questions if needed. This morning, we'll review our third quarter results and highlights, share recent business and regulatory updates, update our capital and financing plans, and provide 2025 guidance. Slides that accompany today's call are available on our website. As a reminder, Some of the comments during today's call may contain forward-looking information. Significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our earnings releases and SEC filings. Today we will discuss certain metrics that are non-GAAP measures. Information on comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations are included in our earnings release. In the third quarter of 24, The Minnesota Commission disallowed $46 million of replacement power costs associated with the extended outage at our Sherco plant in 2011. As a result, we recorded a charge of $35 million or 4 cents in the third quarter, which was in addition to an $11 million or 2 cent charge that was accrued in the second quarter of 24 related to that matter. Given the non-recurring nature of these items, Both charges have been excluded from third quarter and year-to-date earnings. As a result, our GAAP earnings for the third quarter of 24 were $1.21 per share, while our ongoing earnings, which exclude this charge, were $1.25 per share. All further discussion in our earnings call today will focus on ongoing earnings. For more information on this, please see the disclosure in our earnings release. I'll now turn the call over to Bob.

Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that we delivered another quarter of solid operational and financial progress. We continue to deploy capital for the benefit of our customers and communities. And we enable a future powered by cleaner fuels and a more resilient and intelligent grid. We partner with stakeholders to encourage economic development, and we provide products and services capable of meeting our customers most important needs. In the most recent quarter, we invested $2 billion in resilient and reliable energy infrastructure. We delivered ongoing earnings of $1.25 per share for our owners. We provided industry-leading storm response and strong customer reliability despite challenging conditions. We accelerated our wildfire risk reduction measures to enable safer and more resilient communities. Xcel Energy's commitment to our communities and investors is anchored by our core investment thesis as a clean energy leader. For more than two decades, we've been a leading provider of wind energy, and with our filed resource plans, we expect to stay in that position. We've delivered on our earnings guidance for 19 straight years, one of the best records in the industry, and looking to make it 20 this year. We have a long-term and transparent growth plan, making investments in clean generation, new and enhanced energy grids, and economic development programs to support our community's vitality. We've deepened our commitment to serve and support customer needs efficiently. For example, since 2020, our continuous improvement programs have saved almost a half a billion in O&M expense while improving operating outcomes and reducing risk. In addition, we've kept our O&M costs significantly below the rate of inflation over the last 10 years. And our Steel for Fuel strategy has delivered more than $4 billion in customer fuel-related savings since 2017. This discipline alongside supportive state and federal policies enable us to reduce emissions and keep residential electric and natural gas bills 28 and 14% below the industry average and growth well under the rate of inflation. For 16 cents ahead of 2023 year to date earnings and, as a result, we are reaffirming our 2024 guidance of $3 and 50 cents to $3 and 60 cents per share. and we are initiating our 2025 earnings guidance range of $3.75 to $3.85 per share. And today we're introducing our updated five-year $45 billion capital investment plan, which centers on four key areas. Clean energy, which continues investment in generation that provides customers with a secure and clean energy future while helping our state and our customers meet their ambitious policy goals. Customer electrification, which helps customers electrify their transportation needs, transitioning homes and businesses away from fossil fuel heating, and converting fossil fuel loads to clean electric-powered loads. New load growth, which expands our electric system to support customers' surging demand and requirements over the next decade and beyond. And safety and reliability, which modernizes and hardens our system to ensure continued safe operations and address increasing risks from severe weather. There's a lot of focus across our industry and country regarding data centers. Xcel Energy has nearly 9,000 megawatts of opportunities in our customer pipeline before 2030. The scale of this pipeline gives us the ability to thoughtfully negotiate agreements that deliver the energy and capacity needed to important new customers in the region while protecting Xcel Energy and its customers ensuring lasting relationships with our data center customers, ensures that new data center load that's brought onto our system benefits all customers, drives load growth to our increasingly decarbonized energy system, generates economic growth and vitality in our communities, and delivers on the national imperative to support a domestic data center industry. As a result of these guiding principles, we anticipate We will secure contracts with about 25% of this pipeline in the five-year forecast period. We also expect these opportunities to continue to grow and the need extends well past the next decade. We've previously signed data center agreements with META and QTS and completed land sales with entities including Microsoft to support new facilities. In October, a new data center customer completed a land acquisition in our service territory, and we're in the final stages of signing service contracts with that party. Turning to the supply side of the equation, we continued progress during the quarter on our clean energy transition through multiple resource planning and RFP processes. We reached a settlement in our upper Midwest resource plan. As part of that settlement, 720 megawatts of company-owned natural gas CTs and battery investments were selected. In addition, the agreement reflects the need for an incremental 4,200 megawatts of wind, solar, and storage, a portion of which is included in existing RFP solicitations. The settlement is pending a decision by the Minnesota Commission, which is expected in the first quarter of 2025. In October, we made a new energy resource filing in Colorado called the Just Transition solicitation. Our projections indicate the need for up to 14,000 megawatts of new generation to meet the phase out of our coal plants, to accommodate increasing demand from data centers, and to achieve state and customer emissions goals. We anticipate a decision on that filing in fall of 2025, with RFPs to be issued in early 2026. And we're working on our solicitation and SPS, which could ultimately yield more than 5000 megawatts of renewable and firm dispatchable generation. These are due in January of next year, and we expect commission approvals in 2026. Protecting our customers from the threats of extreme weather also remains a top priority. In August, severe thunderstorms brought heavy rain, hail, and winds of over 60 miles an hour to customers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Xcel Energy employees and contractors safely and promptly restored power to over 250,000 customers who lost service during those storms. We're thankful for the dedication of our employees and contractors that ensure that our communities continue to have safe and reliable service that they expect from Xcel Energy. In addition, we'd like to thank our crews who've worked tirelessly to provide mutual aid assistance to other utilities to support recovery and restoration efforts from the devastating hurricanes Helene and Milton. And regarding wildfire risk reduction, we continue to make progress on our accelerated wildfire mitigation efforts, as well as our Colorado wildfire mitigation plan filing. In the fourth quarter, we anticipate filing our Texas resiliency plan, which will include wildfire mitigation in the Southwest. Finally, turning to a tradition that i'm very proud during the third quarter nearly 2200 volunteers from excel energy in our communities took action to support nonprofit organizations during our 14th annual day of service. volunteers dedicated almost 8000 hours to support 125 projects for nonprofits across our eight states. we're grateful to the thousands of volunteers and nonprofits that came together. come together year after year to put good energy into action that fuels growth, influences change, and lifts up our neighbors. With that, I'll turn it over to Brian.