CenterPoint Energy, Inc (Holding Co)

Good morning and welcome to CenterPoint Energy's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call with senior management. During the company's prepared remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. There will be a question-and-answer session after management's remarks. To ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your touch-tone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Ben Vallejo, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Planning. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to CenterPoint's Q1 2026 earnings conference call. Jason Wells, our chair and CEO, and Chris Foster, our CFO, will discuss the company's first quarter 2026 results. Management will discuss certain topics that will contain projections and other forward-looking information and statements that are based on management's beliefs, assumptions, and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially based on various factors as noted in our Form 10-Q, other SEC filings, and our earnings materials. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement other than as required under applicable securities laws. We reported $0.48 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2026 on a GAAP basis. Management will be discussing certain non-GAAP measures on today's call. When providing guidance, we used the non-GAAP EPS measure of diluted adjusted earnings per share on a consolidated basis referred to as non-GAAP EPS. For information on our guidance methodology and reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures used in providing guidance, please refer to our earnings news release and presentation on our website. We use our website to announce material information. This call is being recorded. Information on how to access the replay can be found on our website. Now, I'd like to turn it over to Jason.

Thank you Ben and good morning everyone. On today's call I'd like to address four key areas of focus for the quarter. First, I'll walk through our strong first quarter financial results. Second, I'll provide an update on our load outlook for Houston Electric, including yet another significant increase in our firmly committed load forecast to 12.2 gigawatts of new industrial load. Third, I will cover how our continued and accelerating growth in the greater Houston area could provide incremental capital investment opportunities and further support customer affordability. And lastly, I'll touch on our growing optimism for transformational low growth opportunities for our Indiana electric service territory, which would similarly provide for incremental capital investment and support customer affordability. I will start with our strong first quarter financial results. This morning we reported non-GAAP EPS of 56 cents for the first quarter of 2026. Chris will walk through the details of these results, but I want to highlight that our execution through the first quarter positions us well for the remainder of the year. With that said, we are reiterating our full year 2026 non-GAAP EPS guidance of $1.89 to $1.91, which at the midpoint would represent 8% growth over actual 2025 delivered results. As a reminder, we rebase our long-term earnings guidance from each year's actual results. This approach provides our investors with the direct benefit from compounding effect of the earnings we have consistently delivered. In addition, this approach helps contribute to the durability of our earnings profile, underscoring our commitment to delivering value through disciplined execution and sustained growth each and every year. Over the long term, we continue to expect to grow non-GAAP EPS at the mid to high end of our 7% to 9% annual guidance range through 2028, and 7% to 9% annually thereafter through 2035. I would now like to provide an update on the accelerating growth our Houston Electric business continues to experience and our strong execution, which enables us to take advantage of the growth in the near term. As we shared on the fourth quarter call, we have meaningfully accelerated our load growth outlook, bringing forward our forecast for a 50% increase in peak demand by a full two years. Our conviction in that accelerating timeline was grounded in 7.5 gigawatts of firmly committed load that we expected to be energized by 2029, including 2.5 gigawatts that was already under construction as of our last update. Since then, we have made significant progress in executing against our prior forecast while adding additional customers. As a result, we now have clear line of sight to 12.2 gigawatts of firmly committed load. With the team's disciplined execution, we have already secured ERCOT approval for 3.2 gigawatts of this load. Two and a half gigawatts was approved since our last earnings call alone and within less than 80 days of filing for approval. We expect to submit the remaining 9 gigawatts of projects to ERCOT for approval within the next few weeks. Importantly, this firmly committed load is highly diversified, spanning more than a dozen unique customers across nearly 20 distinct projects. We believe these projects are manageable in size, with 90% representing half a gigawatt of demand or less. That, along with our utilization of existing capacity and our customer selection of project sites near substations, allows for quick and efficient interconnections. Our focused execution over the last few months has also provided us with a clear path to energization. Notably, we are positioned to energize approximately 8 gigawatts of this firmly committed load by 2029, which is 80% of our 10 gigawatt increase we originally forecasted to be energized by the end of 2031. This diversified growth and economic development has another key benefit to the greater Houston area, which helps us keep electricity delivery charges affordable. The greater Houston area is no longer an emerging destination to site new data centers. It is now firmly established as a location of choice for some of the world's largest hyperscalers and developers. However, this is only one facet of Houston's multidimensional growth. The region's growth is being propelled by significant investments in life sciences, energy, energy exports, and advanced manufacturing. With this growth comes new jobs and an influx of new residents, which has fueled a 2% annual residential growth the area has experienced for the last few decades. The expansion of the economy and increase in population have significant affordability benefits for our customers. Notably, we expect that utilizing 10 gigawatts of existing system capacity could provide approximately $4 billion in aggregate savings for Texas residential and commercial customers over the next 10 years, supporting affordability and creating headroom for future customer-driven investments. This affordability profile is one that very few areas in the country can offer, as our charges are 11% below the national average and the lowest in ERCOT. Looking ahead, we believe this growth will continue for years to come, requiring the further expansion of our system to support growth beyond the near term. We are making steady progress on a refresh load study that will inform our transmission planning process, and we expect to complete this study later this year. In Indiana. We are increasingly confident in our ability to secure potentially transformational opportunities to support local economic growth and address affordability. We continue to make considerable progress in our conversations with a large load customer on a project that would represent our single largest load in our southern Indiana service territory, with substantial upside for additional growth. Beyond the significant economic development benefits this opportunity would bring to the local community, it represents a powerful lever to enhance affordability for our customers. We estimate that this initial incremental load could enable $250 million in savings for residential customers over 15 years, meaningfully reducing customer bills, with the opportunity for even greater savings as potential upside for growth materializes. In closing, we continue to believe we have one of the most tangible and executable long-term growth plans in the industry. We are uniquely positioned to move at the speed of business to execute on near-term customer-driven opportunities while also delivering our service affordably. We are laser-focused on making longer-term investments to enhance growth across all of our service territories while also improving customer outcomes. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris to cover their financials in more detail.