FirstEnergy Corp.

Relations. Please go ahead, Karen.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to First Energy's second quarter 2025 earnings review. Our earnings release, presentation slides, and related financial information are available on our website at firstenergycorp.com. Today's discussion will include the use of non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors discussed in our earnings news release during today's conference call and in our SEC filings could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. The appendix of today's presentation includes supplemental information along with the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures. Please read our cautionary statement and discussion of non-GAAP financial measures on slides two and three of the presentation. Our chair, president, and chief executive officer, Brian Tierney, will lead our call today. He will be joined by John Taylor, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. They will discuss our strong performance on each of our key financial metrics, our progress delivering on our target of 2025 core earnings in the upper half of our guidance range, First Energy's excellent position to enable the economic growth and investment highlighted at the recent Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, The significant long term investment opportunities within our well situated transmission operations and our progress on strategic regulatory and legislative activities now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Brian.

Thank you Karen before we get started, I would like to express my condolences to those who are impacted by the tragic events earlier this week in New York City. On behalf of the first energy family, please accept our thoughts prayers and love. as you grieve the loss and celebrate the lives of your loved ones. This morning I will provide an update on our second quarter and year-to-date performance and key developments that we believe are transforming First Energy into a premier electric company. GAAP earnings for the second quarter were 46 cents per share compared to 8 cents in the second quarter of 2024. Core earnings were 52 cents per share for the quarter compared to 51 cents in the second quarter of last year. We are on track to deliver results in the upper half of our full year 2025 guidance range of $2.40 to $2.60 per share. Second quarter core earnings benefited from the strong execution of our investment strategy, reflecting new base rates in Pennsylvania that went into effect in January. Quarterly results also reflect increased investments in our transmission system, which benefit from formula-based rates. Our team continues to demonstrate strong financial discipline on operating expenses. John will speak more about this in a moment. Through the first six months of 2025, we invested $2.5 billion in our infrastructure through Energize 365. We are on pace to deploy $5 billion in capital this year And we have confidence in our $28 billion capital investment plan through 2029 to improve system resiliency and reliability and to support the level of service customers expect. Providing reliable service is at the heart of our mission. This summer, severe weather strained the system in several of our locations. We are committed to resolving these issues quickly and to making the long-term investments to prevent outages before they happen. Our investment plan supports the customers and communities we are privileged to serve and drives long-term value for our shareholders. Turning to slide six. At the recent Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh, hosted by Senator McCormick, I had the opportunity to address a distinguished group of government and business leaders about our significant investments in and commitment to Pennsylvania. A larger, resilient, and reliable electric grid is essential to all of the energy and technology investments announced at the summit we are proud to be the largest electric utility in the state which has a constructive regulatory environment to support investment and economic growth between our distribution operations and the pennsylvania portion of our standalone transmission business the commonwealth represents approximately 35 percent of our total rate base and earnings and first energy pennsylvania is our largest utility subsidiary. Through our 2029 planning period, we expect to invest $15 billion in the commonwealth, consisting of $4.3 billion in distribution capital investments to deliver safe and reliable power, $5.5 billion in transmission capital investments for a modern energy system that can support the growing demand, and over $5 billion in operating expenses that support good paying electric industry jobs. Our Pennsylvania capital investment plans are designed to improve reliability and resiliency and drive economic development. These investments are recovered through constructive rate mechanisms such as forward-looking base rates, distribution investment surcharges, and forward-looking transmission formula rates. Governor Shapiro's economic development strategy is fueling innovation and growth in sectors like ai and energy as pennsylvania's economic development strategy materializes it will require incremental electric infrastructure investments well beyond our current plan slide 7 illustrates the remarkable growth we are experiencing in our data center pipeline and contracted data center load since february of this year our long-term pipeline for data center load has increased over 80 percent to 11.1 gigawatts from 6.1 gigawatts. Our contracted data center load through 2029 has increased approximately 25% since February of this year to 2.7 gigawatts from 2.2 gigawatts. So far this year, we have received requests for 40 new large load studies greater than 500 megawatts each. And since the beginning of 2024, we have received requests for over 95 gigawatts of large load studies. For reference, the first energy system coincident peak load for this summer was approximately 33,475 megawatts. Much of the increase in large load studies this year are coming from the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Data center growth, both in our system and from those adjacent to our footprint, is likely to require additional transmission investments. Turning to slide eight, our transmission system represents a significant growth opportunity for First Energy. The combination of our standalone transmission and integrated transmission systems spans six states and about 24,000 line miles. First Energy is one of the largest transmission asset owners in PJM. Organic investments in our transmission system are expected to drive rate-based growth at a 15% compound annual growth rate between now and 2029. During this period, our annual transmission CapEx is expected to grow from $2.4 billion to $3.4 billion. In addition, our transmission system is ideally located geographically in the middle of PJM to garner incremental investment associated with data center load growth both on our own wires and on systems adjacent to ours. Over the last three years, First Energy has secured approximately $3.1 billion of investments through competitive open windows through Valley Link and in our standalone transmission and integrated segments. We see the incremental transmission expansion associated with load growth as a recurring opportunity for our company. PJM recently initiated the 2025 open window for reliability investment opportunities that we believe are comparable to those in the 2024 RTEP. Our proposals will seek to build on our record of success in the RTEP process. With the need for a more resilient and reliable electric grid to support economic development and data center growth, we expect transmission investment to increase up to 20% in our next five-year plan. Moving on to slide nine on regulatory and legislative updates. In Ohio, our state president Torrance Hinton and his team have done an excellent job moving our base rate case forward. We believe a decision from the PUCO is likely by the end of the year. We are also preparing for the upcoming transition to Ohio's new regulatory framework, which includes multi-year rate cases and forward test years. The new framework supports important capital investments to benefit customers and greater transparency and predictability for our business and investors. In West Virginia, we are preparing to file our 10-year integrated resource plan by October 1st. In that plan, we will provide an updated load forecast and our recommendations to address generation requirements. We expect the IRP will highlight the need for new dispatchable generation in the state. Last week, PJM announced the results from its capacity auction for the 2026 to 2027 delivery year. Prices cleared at the administratively set cap, which is 22% higher than the 2025 to 2026 delivery year, with no new dispatchable coal, gas, or nuclear generation. It is clear that the capacity auction construct does not provide the incentives necessary to finance and build the much-needed dispatchable generation in deregulated states. We will continue to advocate on our customers' behalf for cost-effective solutions that actually add needed generating capacity to meet growing demand and drive economic development in our states. Moving to slide 10, our progress so far this year reflects our work to optimize First Energy for performance, growth, and financial strength. Our leadership team is charged with energizing our culture, delivering improved service to the 6 million customers who depend on us, and creating significant value for our investors. Greater accountability means faster results. We are seeing this in the financial discipline that is helping us drive more efficiencies in our cost structure and in a workforce that is more agile and responsive to customers' needs. We are on track for a successful year. We are reaffirming our 2025 core earnings guidance range of $2.40 to $2.60 per share and are on track to deliver results in the upper half of the range. We are also reiterating our five-year $28 billion base capital investment program with no incremental equity needs in the plan. These customer-focused investments drive our targeted compound annual growth rate of six to 8% through 2029. It is our goal to be recognized as a premier electric company that operates at a high level and consistently delivers growth at or above the midpoint of our guidance range. We offer shareholders a compelling value proposition with a strong growth outlook, demonstrated financial discipline, attractive risk profile, and a targeted shareholder return opportunity of 10 to 12% with upside potential. We are committed to operating at a high level, delivering stable growth, and realizing our bright future for our customers, communities, and investors. With that, I will turn the call over to John.