Black Hills Corporation

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the q1 2026 black hills corporation earnings conference call at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode please be advised that today's conference is being recorded after the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced to withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sal Diaz, Director of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to Black Hills Corporation's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. You can find our earnings release and materials for our call this morning on our website at blackhillscorp.com. Leading our earnings call are Lynn Evans, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kimberly Nooney, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Marnie Jones, Senior Vice President and Chief Utility Officer. During our earnings discussion today, comments we make may contain forward-looking statements as defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and there are a number of uncertainties inherent in such comments. Although we believe that our expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, actual results may differ materially. We direct you to our earnings release slide two of the investor presentation on our website and our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a list of some of the factors that could cause future results to differ materially from our expectations. With that, I will now turn the call over to Lynn Evans. Lynn?

Thank you, Sal. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. I'll provide a summary of our Q1 2026 results, our strategic progress, and our progress with our pending merger with Northwestern Energy. Kimberly will provide our financial update, and Marnie will provide our business update, including key projects, our progress with large load opportunities, and our solid regulatory execution. In April, our industry recognized Line Mechanic Appreciation Month. Let me start by pausing to recognize our remarkable team of men and women, many of whom are tuning in today. You are often the face of our company and industry, which our customers and communities respect, admire, and rely on, ensuring our system is operating reliably and restoring interrupted service as safely and efficiently as possible. When most seek shelter during a weather event, you're the team that heads out into the storm. Thank you for all you do and the sacrifices you make and often your families make to keep the lights on and for what you do every day to keep our customers safe. Our first quarter strategic achievements are outlined on slide three. Following an excellent year of results for our stakeholders in 2025, I'm very proud of our team's continued success, carrying our positive momentum into 2026. We continue to deliver safe, reliable, and affordable energy to our customers and communities while executing on our strategic growth opportunities. We're off to a solid start with reaffirming our earnings guidance range and maintaining our solid financial position and credit ratings. We made regulatory progress, advancing our Arkansas rate review and requesting our first rate review in more than a decade for South Dakota Electric. We also continued construction of our 99 megawatt Lang II generation project, which is on schedule to be placed in service later this year. And the ongoing construction of our 50-megawatt battery storage project is part of our clean energy plan in Colorado that we commenced in Q4 2025. Large load customers, including hyperscale data centers, continue to offer significant growth opportunities representing more than 3 gigawatts of potential demand, including 600 megawatts by 2030 within our current five-year financial plans. We're also negotiating with high quality partners to reach agreements to serve this pipeline. This includes the 1.8 gigawatt data center being developed in Cheyenne, where we have executed an agreement that supports our reservations for generation equipment as part of a mix of resources to serve this potential customer as we continue to advance negotiations toward reaching definitive agreements. Additionally, we are optimistic about the future upside potential of our current pipeline stemming from Microsoft's recent announcement to acquire 3,200 acres of land in Cheyenne, Wyoming for future data center expansion. As a reminder, we approach our growth pipeline with caution, restricting it to demand that is covered by nondisclosure agreements and being actively negotiated. The opportunities we are executing on today, along with this future potential for upside, provide depth and durability to our long-term growth profile. Slide 4 outlines our $4.7 billion five-year capital plan. We invest in our natural gas and electric customers' core needs for safety, reliability, and growth. Our current capital plan includes minimal investments to support the 600 megawatts of data center demand already in our financial plan, which we expect to serve mostly through market energy procurement. We are also developing opportunities for investment that are not currently in our plans. This would include generation and transmission bills as part of a mix of resources to serve growing large load customer demand. Moving to slide five for an update on our merger with Northwestern Energy. We made solid progress alongside Northwestern in advancing our planned merger. Both companies received favorable shareholder votes on April 2nd. The Hart-Scott-Rodino-Axe antitrust waiting period expired on April 20th satisfying an antitrust condition to closing. And we made state regulatory progress with settlements with certain key interveners in all three states, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota. We anticipate securing all state regulatory approvals and FERC approval to finalize the merger within the second half of this year. As I wrap up my prepared remarks, we anticipate continuing to deliver solid results for our stakeholders. as we execute on our customer-focused capital plan, continue our regulatory progress through multiple rate reviews, meet the growing demand of our customers and maintaining positive momentum through our large load pipeline while maintaining protections for our customers, and complete our plan merger with Northwestern. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kimberly for our financial update.