Duke Energy Corporation (Holding Company)

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the Duke Energy fourth quarter and year-end 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Harry, and I'll be coordinating your call today. All lines will remain in listen-only mode for the presentation portion of the call, and there will be an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. During the presentation, you can enter the queue for questions by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two to exit the queue. I will now hand the call over to Abby Motzinger, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Harry, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Duke Energy's fourth 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 a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures. With that, let me turn the call over to Harry Sedaris.

Thank you, Abby, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin by acknowledging our teammates for their incredible response to the recent winter storms that impacted our states. We were prepared and our system performed well, which is a testament to the efforts of our team and the benefits of our grid hardening investments. Moving to financial results, today we announced 2025 earnings per share of 631, representing 7% growth over 2024 and above the midpoint of our guidance range for the year. I'm proud to say we executed on all fronts. Our performance reflects the strength of our regulated utilities, our teammates' unwavering focus on operational excellence, and our commitment to generating sustainable shareholder and customer value. Looking ahead, we're introducing 2026 earnings guidance of 655 to 680. We're also extending our 5% to 7% long-term EPS growth rate through 2030 off the original 2025 guidance midpoint of 630. And I am more confident than ever in our ability to deliver in the top half of the range beginning in 2028 as load growth accelerates. Our earnings profile is underpinned by a $16 billion increase in our five-year capital plan to $103 billion. Our capital plan will drive 9.6% earnings-based growth and is the largest fully regulated capital plan in the industry. focused on critical energy infrastructure investments that strengthen the system and serve increasing load. As the investment needs of our utilities accelerate, I want to emphasize that the cost of energy has been and will remain a key focus for Duke Energy. I'm proud that we have kept rate changes below the rate of inflation on average over the last decade, supported by our continuous improvement culture as well as sensible federal and state energy policies. Before I turn our focus areas for the year ahead, I want to reflect on the significant financial accomplishments in 2025 as outlined on slide five. It was a tremendous year of execution. We delivered strong reported and adjusted earnings above our guidance midpoint. We also announced two strategic transactions at premium valuations that positioned the company for growth. And our credit profile continued to strengthen. Over the last 12 months, we worked with regulators and other stakeholders to recover and securitize nearly $3 billion of storm costs, which was key to achieving 14.8% FFO to debt in 2025. We also advanced our all of the above generation strategy, adding capacity to our system across a diverse mix of resources. This includes 100 megawatt battery storage system we installed in North Carolina, the largest on our system today. We also broke ground on five gigawatts of new natural gas generation in the Carolinas and Indiana. Importantly, we put contracts in place to secure the long lead time equipment and workforce needed to support this new dispatchable generation. While we build for the growth of tomorrow, we remain focused on adding value for our stakeholders today by providing safe, reliable power at the lowest possible cost. Moving to slide six, this year will be defined by continued execution in four core areas. delivering value for our customers, advancing construction on new generation, converting our economic development pipeline into firm projects, and building on our demonstrated track record of constructive regulatory outcomes. Our customers remain our top priority, and we will never waver on our commitment to value and affordability. We'll continue to utilize every tool available to keep rates as low as possible, including managing costs, leveraging tax credits, and minimizing financing costs through regulatory mechanisms like securitization and CWIP and rate base. In 2026, we'll also move forward through the process to combine our Carolinas utilities, which if approved, will save customers more than $1 billion through 2038. These are some of the many solutions we'll employ as we continue to challenge ourselves to find new ways to deliver affordable energy for our customers. We're also protecting existing customers from costs associated with new large load projects through tariff structures and contract provisions. This is important as we continue to convert economic development prospects into firm projects. Since the third quarter call, we signed electric service agreements for another one and a half gigawatts of new data centers. These projects form industry clusters that create value for communities for years to come and benefit our existing customers as fixed costs of the system are spread across a larger base. Finally, we will build on our established track record of delivering constructive regulatory outcomes, which includes our recent South Carolina rate case orders. As a reminder, we reached comprehensive settlements in both cases last year, which were fully approved by the Commission in December. In North Carolina, we're progressing our request for new multi-year rate plans, which would take effect January 1st of 2027. These requests cover investments to strengthen the grid and upgrade our fleet, and importantly, reflect cost control initiatives that have allowed us to maintain flat O&M cost structure despite inflationary pressures and a growing asset base. We know there's never a good time for energy bills to go up. Families and businesses feel every increase in affordability matters. That's why our focus is straightforward. Keep costs as low as possible while maintaining reliability. Moving to slide seven, providing the reliable power our customers expect requires us to add every available megawatt to the grid and increase speed to power as we build for economic growth. We are adding approximately 14 gigawatts of incremental generation over the next five years, which demonstrates our commitment to meet the accelerated growth in front of us by maximizing our current fleet as we add new generation. As I mentioned earlier, we already have agreements in place for the supply chain and workforce to support this incredible build, including provisions with EPC contractors to create efficiencies over time and a framework agreement with GE Vernova on turbine procurement. With over $1 billion of capital deployed every single month, Duke Energy's scope and scale uniquely positions us to lead this record generation build. We have extensive experience from building nearly four gigawatts of gas generation across our fleet over the last decade. And we've been actively preparing for this next build cycle for more than three years, giving us full confidence in our ability to execute the work ahead. Consistent with our all of the above strategy, we will also continue to add battery and solar projects at a steady pace. Our battery deployment in particular will ramp significantly through the five-year plan with approximately four and a half gigawatts of additions through 2031. Finally, we continue to evaluate the potential for new nuclear, maintaining optionality for future development. In December, we submitted an early site permit for a potential SMR at our Belize Creek site in North Carolina. We're taking a disciplined approach to do nuclear, sharing our operational expertise and advancing limiting licensing activities while reducing supply chain risks and allowing technologies to mature. We also continue to seek solutions that mitigate financial risk for customers and investors before we make a decision to move forward with any new nuclear development. Investing in our existing fleet, advancing new generation, and evaluating emerging technologies are critical to ensure we can support our growing communities. We enter 2026 with incredible momentum and are poised to deliver. We're executing our strategy and creating meaningful value for our shareholders and customers. With that, I will now turn over the call to Brian.