Ameren Corporation

Good day, everyone. My name is Ryan, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to the Ameren Corporation first quarter 2026 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 you have joined via the webinar, please use the raised 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, Lenny Singh, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Michael Main, Group President of our Ameren Utilities, as well as other members of the Ameren Management Team. 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 emirateinvestors.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, who will start on page four.

Thanks, Andrew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to cover our first quarter performance and progress toward achieving our 2026 strategic objectives. Yesterday, we reported first quarter 2026 earnings of $1.28 per share compared to earnings of $1.07 per share in the first quarter of 2025. The year-over-year increase of 21 cents per share reflected increased infrastructure investments across all operating segments that will drive significant long-term benefits for our customers. The other key drivers of our results are summarized on this slide. Further, we reaffirmed our 2026 earnings per share growth guidance range of $5.25 to $5.45, reflecting solid execution across our business. Turning to page five, at Ameren, we remain committed to the customers and communities we are privileged to serve. The 2.5 billion electric and 900,000 natural gas customers who count on us every day. Our infrastructure investment decisions are made with that responsibility in mind, focused on strengthening the system, delivering reliable, cost-effective service, and positioning our communities for long-term growth. Through execution of our three-pillar strategy, investing in rate-regulated infrastructure, advocating for constructive regulatory and legislative frameworks, and optimizing our business, we strive to provide exceptional value for our customers, communities, and shareholders. Turning to page six. Here we outlined our strategic priorities for 2026, which we provided in February. To date, we've made meaningful progress, which Lenny and I will discuss as we cover the pages that follow. Of course, key to serving customers well and driving growth are targeted and timely infrastructure investments. As shown on the right, You see that we made more than $1.5 billion of infrastructure investments during the first quarter to maintain and enhance our quality of service. Importantly, our infrastructure investments continue to strengthen the reliability and resiliency of the grid, minimizing customer outages during multiple instances of severe weather during the first quarter of 2026. For example, in January, during the multi-day winter storm fern, Ameren's diverse generation fleet performed exceptionally well, ensuring our customers had access to power under extreme conditions. At the same time, our Ameren Illinois gas storage portfolio helped shield customers from extreme market prices, saving about $63 million, while ongoing upgrades to our underground storage fields continue to lower long-term operating costs and support winter reliability. Then we saw the benefits of our investments again in March, avoiding 4.3 million outage minutes for nearly 20,000 Ameren, Missouri customers, and again during late April storms where system automation helped avoid an additional 43,000 customer outages and 12 million outage minutes each over a two-day period, effectively reducing the overall customer impact of these severe weather events by nearly half. To enhance the performance of our existing generation fleet for summer and winter peak demand periods, and as overall demand grows, we are investing in projects designed to maximize capacity and availability. For example, optimization efforts underway at our Audrain Energy Center will improve winter reliability by adding up to 700 megawatts of capacity on the coldest days. And at our Labadee Energy Center, significant boiler enhancements this year are designed to reduce the number and length of prospective outages. Alongside these enhancements, we continue to execute our Missouri Integrated Resource Plan to add new generation resources. In total, the work we're doing across our generation fleet is designed to ensure customers can continue to rely on us to operate a safe, diverse, dependable, and cost-effective mix of energy centers today and well into the future. We're mindful that reliability and affordability are both important for customers. That's why we continue to operate with financial discipline and work to optimize our business processes, in part through deployment of new tools and technology. In addition, during the first quarter, we helped connect customers with more than $40 million in energy assistance and weatherization resources through AMRN programs and federal, state, and local partnerships. Turning to page seven. Looking ahead, we see the opportunity for strong growth, with businesses making significant long-term commitments to locate and expand in our region. Our long-term earnings per share expectations outlined in February were based upon a compounded annual sales growth assumption of 6.2% from 2026 through 2030. We continue to expect that the 2.2 gigawatts of ESAs we signed in February represent upside to our sales and earnings forecasts to the extent the sales from the ESAs ramp faster than our existing plan assumption of 1.2 gigawatts by 2030. As we've said, we expect to update our sales forecasts for these agreements as other project milestones are achieved, including the customer project announcements, groundbreaking, and construction progress. In addition, we're optimistic about converting a portion of our remaining 1.2 gigawatts of construction agreements to additional ESAs in the near term. We're excited to support these data center projects as their construction is expected to bring in thousands of jobs and the projects are expected to generate millions of dollars in tax revenue for local communities. In addition, serving these customers will require acceleration of significant infrastructure investments on our part, supporting additional jobs and tax revenue, all paid for by the counterparties to our ESAs. As new large load electric demand evolves, our focus remains on serving all customers reliably by carefully planning and executing grid upgrades and maintaining a balanced generation portfolio while ensuring cost to serve new large load customers are appropriately allocated to and borne by them. Turning to page eight. We are well on our way to delivering the more than five gigawatts of new energy and capacity resources currently planned to go into service through 2030, as our team continues to execute on a robust generation plan. The 50 megawatt Bowling Green Energy Center was placed in service in March, and we recently began final commissioning activities on the second project, the 300 megawatt Split Rail Energy Center. These projects have the ability to deliver enough combined energy to power more than 63,000 homes. In addition, we continue to advance two 800 megawatt simple cycle natural gas energy centers, Castle Bluff and Big Hollow, which are expected to begin serving customers in 2027 and 2028 respectively, along with 400 megawatts of battery storage at Big Hollow. For Castle Bluff, construction is underway and we received the first of four gas turbines ahead of schedule And for Big Hollow, our contractors have begun mobilizing and preparing the site for construction, which is expected to begin this quarter. In the meantime, we continue to pursue regulatory approvals required for additional generation resources. In March, we reached a stipulation and agreement with intervenors for the CCN we are seeking for the Reform Energy Center, a 250 megawatt facility expected to be in service in 2028. This agreement is subject to Missouri PSC approval. Further, we expect to file additional CCN requests by the third quarter for approximately three gigawatts of new generation, primarily including the 2.1 gigawatt West Alton combined cycle facility, as well as additional battery storage. At the same time, we continue to carefully analyze future sales expectations and assess the timing and mix of new generation resources in advance of our next Missouri IRP, targeted for late September, which will provide an updated 20-year view of our generation strategy. Moving to page nine for a brief transmission update. We expect significant transmission investment will be needed over time to support new large load customers and connect the new generation resources required to serve our territory reliably as regional demand grows. We expect these potential investments to be incorporated into our plans as opportunities further mature. At the same time, we remain focused on executing our awarded long-range transmission projects from the first two MISO tranches and on advancing competitive opportunities under tranche 2.1. In January, we submitted bids for two competitive projects based in Illinois with MISO expected to select developers for the projects by mid-2026. We're also evaluating two additional competitive opportunities with bid submissions due by the end of May. Turning to page 10, we've outlined the investment pipeline across our businesses over the next decade. These investments will support the safety, reliability, and resiliency of the energy grid while positioning our system to power the quality of life for all customers in our territory. This pipeline stands at more than $70 billion through 2035 and is expected to continue supporting strong growth opportunities for our customers, communities, and shareholders. Turning to page 11, we expect effective execution of our strategy to continue to drive strong total shareholder return. In February, we updated our five-year growth plan, which included our expectation to deliver annual earnings per share growth consistently near the upper end of our 6% to 8% compound annual earnings growth rate from 2026 through 2030. This earnings growth is primarily driven by strong compound annual rate-based growth of 10.6% reflecting strategic capital allocation across our constructive regulatory frameworks and conservative sales growth assumptions. I'm excited by the milestones achieved year-to-date with new large load customers and anticipated additional positive developments in 2026. Over the course of the year, as we get greater clarity on the timing and amount of these new customers' service ramp-up, We will update our sales growth assumptions and incorporate them into our updated Missouri Integrated Resource Plan, as well as incorporate any additional transmission investment needed into our five-year plan. Last, 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 in a way that benefits our customers, shareholders, and communities. Again, thank you all for joining us today. I will now turn the call over to Lenny.