Avista Corporation

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Avista Corporation Q2 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, our participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Stacey Wentz, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to Avista's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Our earnings and second quarter Form 10-Q were released pre-market this morning. You can find both on our website. Joining me this morning are Avista Corp CEO, Dennis Vermillion, President and COO, Heather Rosentrader, Senior Vice President, CFO, Treasurer and Regulatory Affairs Officer, Kevin Christie, and Vice President, Controller and Principal Accounting Officer, Ryan Crassel. Today, we will make certain statements that are forward-looking. These involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties which are subject to change. Various factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations we discussed in today's call. Please refer to our Form 10-K for 2023 and our Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2024, which are available on our website for a full discussion of these risk factors. I'll begin with a recap of the financial results presented in today's press release. Our consolidated earnings for the second quarter of 2024 were $0.29 for diluted share compared to $0.23 for the second quarter of 2023. Year-to-date, consolidated earnings were $1.20 for diluted share compared to $0.96 last year. Now, I'll turn the call over to Dennis.

Well, thanks, Stacey, and good morning, everyone. Wherever you're listening to this call, I sure hope you're having a good summer. It's certainly been a warm one around here recently. For the second quarter, Avista Utilities delivered earnings in line with our expectations. Our financial results for the quarter and the year and year to date speak to our core strength, our utility operations. Because of the work we do every day, we're positioned well to deliver on our commitments to our customers and our shareholders. We're making the right investments in our infrastructure to enhance reliability. We're mitigating risk through execution of our wildfire mitigation plan. And we're keeping our focus on achieving our clean energy goals. And Heather's going to have some more on these in a moment. In June, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of our Kettle Falls Biomass Generating Station. This award-winning power plant produces energy from wood waste. When we brought the facility online, it was the first utility-owned generating station of its kind in the United States. The Kettle Falls facility embodies our innovative spirit and our commitment to stewardship of the environment while contributing to our mission of providing reliable, affordable energy. It's a showcase of the exceptional partnerships established four decades ago between Avista, the timber industry, and the communities we serve. Around the same time as Kettle Falls, Coal Strip, the coal-fired generating plant in eastern Montana, was brought online. And in 2023, as you know, we entered into an agreement to transfer our interest in the plant to Northwestern. We hand over the keys to Northwestern, so to speak, at midnight on December 31, 2025, and that transaction remains on track in light of the recent deal between Puget Sound Energy and Northwestern. Coal Strip's exit from our generation portfolio is included in our ongoing Washington general rate case, one of the many important considerations impacting power supply costs through the proposed rate effective period. And Kevin will have a bit more on power supply in his portion of the call. We continue to be on track to meet our consolidated earnings targets for 2024. I'm proud of the diligence of our team as we work to achieve these results. Today we are confirming our consolidated earnings guidance of $2.36 to $2.56 per diluted share for 2024. Now I'll turn the call over to Heather.