Avista Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Avista Corporation Q4 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the 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 Walters, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for EVISA's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Our earnings and 2025 Form 10-K were released pre-market this morning. You can find both documents on our website, along with the presentation that accompanies our remarks this morning. Joining me today are Avista Corp President and CEO, Heather Rosentrader, and Senior Vice President, CFO, Treasurer, and Regulatory Affairs Officer, Kevin Christie. We will be making forward-looking statements during this call. These involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties which are subject to change. Various factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations we discuss in today's call. Please refer to our Form 10-K for 2025 for a full discussion of these risk factors, which is available on our website. On this call, we will also discuss non-GAAP utility earnings. Our fourth quarter earnings presentation is posted on our website and includes definitions and reconciliations for all non-GAAP disclosures, including non-GAAP utility earnings. Our non-GAAP utility earnings are comprised of results from our EVISA utilities and AEL&P segments. The unrealized gains and losses that have historically made up the majority of our non-regulated other business earnings can be significant, but they are difficult to predict and outside management's control. The shift to discussion of non-GAAP utility results and earnings guidance reflects management's focus on the core utility business. And now let me begin with a recap of the financial results presented in today's press release. Our 2025 consolidated earnings were $2.38 per diluted share compared to $2.29 in 2024. Our 2025 non-GAAP utility earnings were $2.55 per diluted share compared to $2.38 per diluted share in 2024. For the fourth quarter of 2025, our consolidated earnings were 87 cents per diluted share compared to 84 cents per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2024. Our non-GAAP utility earnings were 88 cents per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 89 cents per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2024. And now, I'll turn the call over to Heather.

Thank you, Stacey. And as I reflect on my first year as CEO of Avista, I am struck by how it combined exciting opportunities for growth and investment with an unprecedented level of uncertainty. Yet, just as we have for the last 136 years, our teams leaned in and sustained their focus on executing our strategies. Before I get into the details, I want to start with how we're thinking about this last quarter. While our results were impacted by a few specific items, our sustained focus led to progress on key priorities. That includes progress on our request for proposal, or RFP, continued discussions with potential large load customers, and steady regulatory activity. All of this supports the strength of our utility over the long term. We remain committed to delivering safe, reliable energy to the communities we serve and creating value for our shareholders. As we closed out 2025, Avista Utility's results were impacted by both the one time adjustment of coal strip related investments, which on its own decreased our earnings per share by seven cents, and other timing related items. Even with those headwinds, we were able to land within the original utility guidance range and excluding those factors utility results would have been above the midpoint of our 2025 utilities earnings guidance. With 2025 concluded, we're excited to look ahead to 2026. Last month, we filed a four-year rate plan with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission. This filing reflects how we're thinking about supporting safe and reliable service over the long term. Among other considerations, our proposal addresses rising costs related to grid modernization, clean energy compliance, purchased power, hydropower infrastructure investments, and emerging risks such as wildfires and extreme weather. By filing a four-year case rather than a two-year case, we aim to reduce the frequency of regulatory proceedings, provide greater stability in our cost recovery and shareholder returns, and provide more transparency and predictability for our customers. Last month, we announced the projects we selected from our RFP process. The first selection is an upgrade to existing natural gas turbines, which will add 14 megawatts of capacity without increasing carbon emissions. Second, we selected a 100 megawatt battery energy storage system to be located in eastern Washington and to be built and transferred to Avista under a build transfer agreement. Finally, we selected a 200 megawatt power purchase agreement for wind from Montana and approximately 40 megawatts of demand response programs across our service territory. These projects will bring valuable, resilient energy solutions to our portfolio. Since we first reported on our queue of interest from potential new large load customers last year, we've continued to work through conversations with these potential customers. And I am happy to announce that we've received a significant deposit from a data center developer intending to locate in our service territory in Washington. The initial load is expected to be 125 megawatts, quickly ramping up to a maximum of 500 megawatts. We expect the initial load to come online by 2030, and we'll keep you updated as we make progress. As expected, as we have worked with customers in our queue to evaluate their projects, we are narrowing in on the most feasible opportunities. At present, including the customer just mentioned, approximately 1,700 megawatts remain in our queue of potential large load customers. We continue to receive inbound interest, and we expect to begin curated recruiting to attract additional interest that could align with specific geographic and electric infrastructure areas of the system that are best suited for large load interconnections. We know affordability is critically important, and as we look to add new large load in our service territory, it's our expectation that agreements we reach both with our current negotiations and future prospective customers would make a significant contribution to customer affordability. We've also made significant strides in expanding our energy assistance programs for our customers in need. These programs help make energy bills more affordable. for those that most need the support. Recent enhancements to our best-in-class programs have expanded our reach for energy assistance to as much as four times as many customers in need in the last two years. These programs are fundamental to how we think about serving our communities now and into the future. The opportunities that were a highlight of 2025 continue into 2026. The Washington Commission has encouraged Avista to explore early acquisition of resources to capitalize on tax credit opportunities. We are still evaluating several other RFP bid projects, exploring the acquisition or long-term contracting of these projects to take advantage of tax credits, serve large loads, and enhance flexibility until Avista has a need for serving more load. Beyond generation, additional transmission is needed to move energy from generation resources to load centers. The North Plains Connector, is one such project that supports this need, and we have significant additional opportunities closer to home that would improve regional grid reliability and resilience as customer demand evolves. Finally, earlier this month, the Board of Directors raised the dividend for our shareholders to $1.97 per share. Our dividend is an important component of shareholder return, and for 24 consecutive years, the Board of Directors has raised the dividend for our shareholders, resulting in compound annual growth of more than 5% over that time period. We remain committed to the importance of returns for our shareholders and to the financial strength of our company. We are now targeting a competitive payout range of 60 to 70%, which is in line with our peers. And for the last few years, we've been a bit above our target payout range, which was 65% to 75% during that period. As a result, we expect that our dividend growth rate will be less than the growth in our earnings per share until we reach our target payout range. And now, I'll hand the call to Kevin for additional discussion of earnings.