Ameren Corporation

Good day, everyone. My name is Abigail and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to the Ameren Corporation fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time and if you have joined via the webinar, please use the raise hand icon, which can be found at the bottom of your webinar application. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Andrew Kirk, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Modeling.

Thank you, and good morning. On the call with me today are Marty Lyons, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Lenny Singh, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as other members of the Ameren management team, including Michael Main, Group President of Ameren Utilities. This call contains time-sensitive data that is accurate only as of the date of today's live broadcast, and redistribution of this broadcast is prohibited. We have posted a presentation on the amarininvestors.com homepage that will be referenced by our speakers. As noted on page two of the presentation, comments made during this conference call may contain statements about future expectations, plans, projections, financial performance, and similar matters, which are commonly referred to as forward-looking statements. Please refer to the forward-looking statements section in the news release we issued yesterday as well as our SEC filings for more information about the various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Now here's Marty.

Thanks, Andrew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Beginning on page four, here we highlight some of the key updates we will cover today. We will walk through our 2025 financial results, recap key accomplishments, and discuss how we are well positioned for 2026 and the years ahead. Specifically, we delivered 2025 adjusted earnings of $5.03 per share, which represents 8.6% growth over adjusted 2024 results. And we affirmed our 2026 earnings per share guidance range of $5.25 to $5.45. I'm also pleased to report that this week we signed 2.2 gigawatts of large load electric service agreements in Missouri. We continue to take meaningful steps towards supporting significant economic development opportunities emerging across our service territory, while also continuing to provide strong value for all our customers and our communities. I'm proud of not only the strong operational and financial results we delivered as an Ameren team, but also our strategic plans and accomplishments that we expect will lead to competitive long-term returns for our shareholders in the years ahead. Today, we issued 6 to 8 percent earnings per share growth guidance for the period 2026 to 2030, and we continue to expect year-over-year results near the upper end of that range. Turning now to page five. As always, at the center of everything we do is creating value for the 2.5 million electric and 900,000 natural gas customers that we have the privilege to serve. Our three-pillar strategy, investing in rate-regulated infrastructure, advocating for constructive regulatory and legislative frameworks, and optimizing our business, continue to guide our work for customers, communities, and shareholders. This year, the Ameren team accomplished all of the key strategic objectives we outlined a year ago, shown on page 6. This included investment of more than $4 billion in electric, natural gas, and transmission infrastructure. We installed nearly 26,000 electric distribution poles, 283 miles of upgraded transmission and distribution lines and underground cable, 750 smart switches, and 31 new or upgraded substations. We also made significant progress on the development of new generation resources. On the regulatory front, we received constructive orders in both Missouri and Illinois electric and natural gas rate reviews. And legislatively, the enactment of Missouri Senate Bill 4 provides support for economic development, and investment in reliable energy for years to come. To further advance economic development and ongoing reliability, we updated our Ameren Missouri Preferred Resource Plan last February and immediately began executing on the accelerated components. Speaking of economic development, in 2025, we worked with stakeholders across Missouri and Illinois to support more than 70 projects that are expected to bring an estimated $3.6 billion of capital investment and approximately 3,700 jobs to our service territory from new or expanding businesses, fueling regional economic growth for years to come. These businesses represent the diverse set of industries operating across our states, including healthcare, manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, alternative energy, and food production. We also work closely with stakeholders to design and obtain approval of a new rate structure for large load customers to support fair cost allocation and reliable service as customer energy needs evolve. I'm proud of our team's performance in 2025. Collectively, we focused on safely providing electric and gas service to our customers, battling through challenging weather events, building more reliable and resilient infrastructure, and maintaining disciplined cost management. As a result of strong execution of the company's strategy and solid operating performance, We delivered 2025 adjusted earnings of $5.03 per share, up 8.6 percent from 2024 adjusted earnings of $4.63 per share. Turning to page seven, here we highlight the value we deliver for our customers and communities. In 2025, severe weather events tested our system, as we experienced approximately 30 percent more storms than average over the past 10 years. The severe storms and tornadoes, as well as extreme temperatures experienced in our territory, highlighted the value of our investments, which are designed to bolster reliability and resiliency, and the value of our team members, who braved these challenging conditions to safely restore service when our customers needed us most. In the face of this elevated storm activity, our system and teams performed exceptionally well. Reliability and resiliency remained strong, benchmarking in the first quartile for SAFE performance and second quartile for SADI performance. In 2025, our investments to strengthen the grid prevented more than 56 million minutes of potential customer outages across Missouri and Illinois, more than double the prevented outage minutes from last year. The investments to strengthen the reliability of our system are also the foundation for economic growth and strong customer satisfaction. Notably, a recent economic impact study shows our operations in Missouri and Illinois generate more than $20 billion in annual economic activity, in addition to other benefits to the communities where we live and work. At the same time, we continue improving the day-to-day experience for customers. By leveraging technology and streamlining service processes, we've given customers more control and transparency with regard to energy use and billing and a quicker path to assistance. reducing our average call handle time by 21% and total call volume by 12% since 2023. These improvements are resonating with customers, who have rated their satisfaction at approximately 4.6 out of 5 stars on average after interacting with us across all our service channels, including call center, website transactions, and field service. Moving to page 8, We recognize that our critical infrastructure projects represent significant investments, which is why we prioritize the projects that are most beneficial for customers and maintain a sharp focus on keeping rates as low as possible. Through disciplined cost management, we have been able to keep our Ameren-supplied residential rates in Missouri and Illinois on average below both national and Midwest averages. Importantly, the percentage of the average customer's income spent on electricity has remained stable, generally tracking the rate of inflation over the last decade, even as we've made substantial investments in critical infrastructure. Ameren invests hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support our customers and communities through energy efficiency programs, demand response initiatives, and substantial energy assistance funding. In addition to funding Ameren develop programs, we also partner with a wide range of organizations to connect customers with available federal, state, and local assistance. Turning to page nine, disciplined execution of our strategy has delivered strong and consistent results over time. Weather normalized adjusted earnings per share have risen at an approximate 7.4% compound annual growth rate since we divested our merchant business in 2013 while annual dividends per share have increased 78% through 2025. This performance has resulted in a total shareholder return of greater than 300% over the same period, significantly outperforming utility index averages. As we look ahead, we believe execution of that same strategy, putting customers and community value at the center, will continue to drive strong returns. Moving to page 10, we turn our focus to our key strategic objectives, which continue to be focused on resource adequacy, reliability, affordability, and supporting local economic growth. This year, we plan to invest approximately $5.5 billion in electric, natural gas, and transmission infrastructure to bolster the safety, security, reliability, and responsiveness of the energy grid. As we execute our generation plan over the coming years, we will continue to file CCN requests for new generation resources. And we expect to file our triennial Missouri integrated resource plan by late September, which will outline updated generation plans for the next 20 years. Further, last month we filed the required Ameren Illinois integrated grid plan detailing electric investments needed for 2028 through 2031 and we are seeking ICC approval of the plan by the end of this year. We continue to evaluate regionally beneficial transmission investment opportunities in MISO. We submitted bids for two tranche 2.1 competitive projects last month and are evaluating two other bidding opportunities. As always, while we work to accomplish the key objectives highlighted on this page, we remain focused on operating as efficiently and effectively as possible with a goal to hold O&M growth below the rate of inflation and as low as prudently possible over our five-year plan. We have a number of initiatives underway to continuously improve and optimize our performance. On page 11, we outline how the execution of our strategy is expected to drive a strong total shareholder return over the next five years. Today, we are rolling forward our five-year investment plan And as you can see, we expect to grow our rate base at a 10.6% compound annual rate from 2025 through 2030. This strong expected rate base growth will be driven by $31.8 billion of planned infrastructure investment, a 21% increase in our five-year capital plan compared to the plan laid out last February. With the increase primarily due to robust expected generation investment needed to serve anticipated load growth and support system reliability. We continue to expect 2026 earnings to be in a range of $5.25 per share to $5.45 per share. The midpoint of this range represents 8.1% earnings per share growth compared to our original 2025 earnings guidance midpoint. Building on our proven strategy and track record of strong earnings growth, we continue to expect to deliver 6% to 8% compound annual earnings per share growth from 2026 through 2030, using the midpoint of our 2026 guidance of $5.35 per share as the base. More specifically, we expect consistent earnings growth near the upper end of this range in 2027 through 2030. In addition, last week, Ameren's Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend increase of 5.6%, equating to an annualized dividend rate of $3 per share. This represents our 13th consecutive year of increasing our dividend. We continue to expect dividend growth in line with our long-term EPS growth guidance, and we expect our dividend payout ratio, which today is approximately 56%, to be maintained within a range of 50% to 60%. Combined, our earnings and dividend growth expectations support our strong long-term total shareholder return proposition. On page 12, we provide an update on the Ameri-Missouri large load rate structure, which the Missouri PSC approved last November. This rate structure is in accordance with Missouri state law, which requires data centers to pay for costs to connect them to our system and for them to pay their share of ongoing cost of service. Under the large load rate structure, Customers requesting 75 megawatts or more will pay a base rate, which at this time is approximately 6.2 cents per kilowatt hour, and agree to additional terms and conditions under an ESA. The additional terms will include a service commitment of 12 years after ramp, a minimum demand charge of 80% of contracted capacity, termination provisions, and collateral requirements, all designed to protect existing customers. In addition, new customer programs will allow qualifying customers to elect to advance their clean energy goals by supporting the carbon-free energy resource of their choice through incremental payments, which would be used to help offset costs of service for other customers. Turning to page 13, I'll provide an update on the large load data center opportunities in our service territory. In the coming years, these projects are expected to bring in jobs, tax revenues, and investment and to drive long-term economic growth. Just this week, Ameren Missouri executed ESAs with large load customers that cumulatively represent 2.2 gigawatts of new demand to be served in the future. Executing these ESAs is an important milestone. Of course, there are a number of other project milestones still to be achieved, including the customer project announcements, groundbreaking, and construction. Still, these agreements are an exciting development. Our five-year financial plan laid out today assumes 6.2% compound annual sales growth from 2026 through 2030, which includes a base assumption of 1.2 gigawatts of new load growth by 2030, consistent with our preferred resource plan and is depicted by the blue line on the chart on the right-hand side of this page. The 2.2 gigawatts of executed ESAs represent upside to our sales and earnings forecasts. Developers continue to evaluate Missouri and Illinois for additional future large load projects. In Missouri, this pipeline includes projects with transmission interconnection construction agreements, representing a total of 3.4 gigawatts of potential new demand, inclusive of projects associated with the executed ESAs. And in downstate Illinois, this pipeline includes projects with construction agreements representing a total of 850 megawatts of new demand. We have now received approximately $46 million in non-refundable payments from developers in Missouri and Illinois to cover the cost of transmission upgrades related to these construction agreements. These payments reflect developers' confidence in and commitment to their projects. Turning to page 14 for an update on our generation build-out. The integrated resource plan filed last February called for development of 5.3 gigawatts of new generation resources between 2025 and 2030. We've made strong progress on development of these resources over the last year, with nearly 2.7 gigawatts of new generation in progress. In December, we placed Vandalia Energy Center, a 50 megawatt solar facility, in service. and the Bowling Green and Split Rail Solar Energy Centers, totaling 350 megawatts, began final testing in January. Further, as part of strengthening our existing fleet, dual-fuel conversion work is expected to be completed by the end of the year at our Audrain Energy Center to add 700 megawatts of capacity on the coldest winter days when gas is otherwise unavailable. We continue to advance our new natural gas generation projects as well. Yesterday, the Missouri PSC approved the Certificate of Convenience and Necessity for the 800 megawatt Big Hollow Natural Gas Energy Center and accompanying 400 megawatt battery storage facility, both scheduled to be in service in 2028. Proactive strategic supply chain work for all of our planned generation resources continues. We have procured long lead time components, such as turbines and transformers, for our planned near-term energy centers, and we have executed gas supply contracts and awarded labor contracts for both SimpleCycle natural gas facilities. We continue to actively plan for the construction of a 2.1 gigawatt combined cycle facility included in our IRP, having secured production slots for the three necessary turbines. We anticipate filing our CCN request with the Commission later this year for this combined cycle facility, which we expect to be placed in service in 2031. These efforts keep us on track to maintain a balanced energy mix to meet growing demand affordably and reliably, targeting approximately 70% generation from on-demand resources and 30% from intermittent resources by 2040. Moving now to page 15 for a transmission update. As we look ahead, there's a significant transmission investment needed to support new large load customers, as well as energy resources to supply this new demand reliably. In addition, we remain focused on executing our assigned tranche one and 2.1 long range transmission projects and developing strong proposals for tranche 2.1 competitive projects. In January, we submitted joint bids for two Illinois projects, and we expect MISO to select the developers for the projects this summer. Bids for two additional MISO projects are due mid-2026, and we are evaluating those opportunities. Recall that we do not include competitive projects in our capital plan or 10-year pipeline until projects are awarded. Now, turning to page 16 for an update on investment opportunities in our service territory over the next decade. Our pipeline continues to grow, standing today at more than $70 billion. These investments will strengthen the safety, reliability, and resiliency of the energy grid, powering the quality of life for families and businesses, and supporting thousands of jobs and driving economic growth across our communities. Moving to page 17 to sum up our value proposition. We're confident that the execution of our strategy in 2026 and beyond will continue to deliver superior value to our customers and shareholders. Solid operating performance and prudent infrastructure investment, along with a strong balance sheet and strong credit ratings, supports safe, cost-efficient, and reliable service for our customers. Robust infrastructure investment is needed in each of our business segments to ensure safe, reliable service and to meet the demands associated with exciting economic development opportunities. These infrastructure investments are anticipated to drive compound annual rate-based growth of 10.6 percent, which, along with sales growth, provides the foundation for our 6 to 8 percent compound annual earnings growth expectation. Continuing our long track record of delivering strong earnings growth, coupled with an attractive and growing dividend, will result in a compelling total return story for those seeking a high-quality utility investment opportunity. I'm confident in our team's ability to effectively execute our investment plans and other elements of our strategy across all four of our business segments. Again, thank you all for joining us today. I would now like to welcome our recently appointed Chief Financial Officer, Lenny Singh.