Duke Energy Corporation (Holding Company)

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the Duke Energy Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Sammy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two on your telephone keypad to remove yourself from the question queue. I'll now hand over to our host, Abby Motzinger, Vice President of Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead, Abby.

Thank you, Sammy, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Duke Energy's second quarter 2025 earnings review and business update. Leading our call today is Harry Sedaris, President and CEO, along with Brian Savoy, Executive Vice President and CFO. Today's discussion will include the use of non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking information. Actual results may differ from forward-looking statements due to factors disclosed in today's materials and in Duke Energy's SEC filings. The appendix of today's presentation includes supplemental information, along with the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures. With that, let me turn the call over to Harry.

Thank you, Abby, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you today for our second quarter earnings call. We have a lot of exciting news to share this morning, starting with Brookfield Infrastructure's $6 billion minority investment in our Florida business. This transaction enables a material strengthening of our credit profile as we enter this period of significant growth, as well as the ability to grow our Florida utility at its full potential. We are now targeting FFO to debt of 15%, a 100 basis point increase versus our previous target. We are also increasing our Florida capital plan by $4 billion, funded by a portion of the sale proceeds. Brookfield is a highly regarded infrastructure investment and we are pleased to have them as a long-term partner in Duke Energy Florida. In further support of our capital funding needs, we announced the sale of our Tennessee LDC business to SPIRE last week. The premium valuation of $2.5 billion, or 1.8 times rate base, reflects the high end of LDC asset sale precedents. We have been privileged to serve the Tennessee community for more than 40 years. And I know that under SPIRE's leadership, our teammates and assets will continue to operate with excellence and provide best-in-class service. Combined, these strategic transactions allow us to efficiently finance the record growth ahead of us and give us greater confidence in delivering our EPS objectives. Shifting to the second quarter results on slide five. we announced adjusted earnings per share of $1.25, building on our strong start to the year. These results were driven by top-line growth across electric utilities. We move into the back half of the year with positive momentum and are reaffirming our 2025 guidance range of $6.17 to $6.42 and our long-term EPS growth rate of 5% to 7% through 2029. Moving to slide six, we continue to deliver on our strategic priorities, including advancing large-scale economic development projects and securing industry-leading regulatory and legislative outcomes. Starting with economic development, we operate in some of the most attractive jurisdictions in the country. Our states continue to thrive and grow, and the affordable, reliable power we provide plays a key role in bringing business into our regions. We've been partnering with our states to attract jobs and investments for decades, and that momentum continues to build. In fact, North Carolina was just named the top state for business by CNBC for the third time in four years, and most of our states ranked in the top 10. Our size and scale, together with an unwavering commitment to our customers and demonstrated willingness to partner to do business allow us to move with speed and agility to seize the opportunity ahead. To highlight a recent project win, Amazon Web Services announced in June that it plans to invest more than $10 billion to build a new data center campus in North Carolina. I am proud to say that our team played an integral role in making this happen. AWS described North Carolina as being the perfect home for this investment and highlighted our efforts in putting the site on their radar. Our team continues to build on their track record of success, moving at pace with our customers to deliver what they need, when they need it. To continue to bring in these significant wins in a competitive environment, we are working closely with our stakeholders. During the quarter, we advanced for state and federal policies that enables us to meet the moment for our customers. while at the same time supporting our credit profile, improving our regulatory constructs, and maintaining customer affordability. These outcomes show clear alignment between our company and policymakers on shared goals of delivering reliable and affordable energy to meet growing demand. On the federal side, the preservation of nuclear production tax credits in the final budget reconciliation bill was a significant win for our customers. Only well-run, cost-efficient reactors are eligible to receive the credit. Our 11 gigawatt nuclear fleet is the largest regulated fleet in the nation and earned $500 million of PTCs last year for the benefit of our customers. We appreciate the engagement from Congress, the administration, and stakeholders around our shared objective of supporting nuclear energy and lowering customer bills. In North Carolina, the Power Bill Reduction Act became law last week. As we ramp up generation investments to meet accelerating load growth, this legislation allows for annual recovery of financing costs for new baseload generation, supporting our credit profile and minimizing costs to customers. In South Carolina, the Energy Security Act was signed into law in May. The legislation supports all or above strategy, recognizing the value of our dual state system, and importantly, allows electric utilities to implement a rate stabilization mechanism similar to our gas utilities. This efficient mechanism allows for annual rate true-ups that reduce volatility for customers and support the credit quality of the utility. And finally, the Ohio legislation approved House Bill 15 in May as well. As outlined, the law replaces the electric security plan with a multi-year forward-looking rate-making process, reducing regulatory lag. Beyond legislative accomplishments, we continue to build our track record of regulatory execution. We recently filed rate cases in South Carolina for both Duke Energy Progress and Duke Energy Carolinas. We expect hearings to take place in the fourth quarter, with new rates in effect early next year if approved. Later this month, we plan to file applications with the North Carolina and South Carolina Commissions and FERC to combine our DEC and DEP utilities. We expect the combination to generate significant customer savings, over $1 billion through 2038, as we simplify processes and add operational flexibility to our system. We are targeting January 27th for the effective date. And finally, we continue to advance regulatory approval processes for new generation investments and plan to file our next Carolinas Resource Plan in North Carolina by October 1st. Focusing on our generation plans, as you can see on slide 7, we are actively advancing all solutions to quickly meet the increasing demand coming to our service territories, including maximizing our current fleet while we build new capacity. and we're on track to add over eight gigawatts of dispatchable power across our system through 2031. This includes upright projects to efficiently increase the capacity of existing natural gas, nuclear and hydro units. In aggregate, they represent over one gigawatt of cost-effective incremental capacity. Turning to new generation, we finalized the EPC agreement for our first combined cycle under development in the Carolinas and construction is underway. We also announced the site location for the third combined cycle in Anderson, South Carolina. In Indiana, we reached two settlements in our Cayuga CPCN proceeding. The agreements with Reliable Energy and the industrial group provide key support for our request, including the request to recover financing costs as they are incurred. Hearings begin later this month, and we expect an order by November. These milestones demonstrate our progress in advancing these critical infrastructure investments. With turbines secured under our framework agreement with GE Vernova and gas supply contracted, we are confident in meeting the in-service timelines we have laid out for these new units. In closing, our strength in the first half of the year was driven by solid execution by our 26,000 teammates. This performance, Harry Plocher, coupled with our unwavering focus on operational excellence demonstrates our ability to meet the unprecedented growth, we see over the next decade and deliver value for shareholders and customers with that, let me turn the call over to Brian.