IDACORP, Inc.

Welcome to IDACorp's first quarter 2022 conference call. Today's call is being recorded and our webcast is live. A complete replay will be available later today and for the next 12 months on the IDACorp website. If you need assistance at any time during the presentation, please press star zero on your phone. I will now turn the call over to Justin Forsberg, Director of Investor Relations and Treasury.

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. This morning we issued and posted IDA Corps website our first quarter 2022 earnings release and form 10 Q. We're also pleased to point you to our latest environmental, social and governance report, which we published last month. This report highlights many of the areas that define our company's culture, such as our stewardship of the Snake River, as well as wild and aquatic life and safety, integrity and respect as company values. While we have published this type of report for several years, this is the second year we have reported metrics and disclosures utilizing the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure Reporting Frameworks. We also continued our disclosure of EEI standardized ESG metrics. You can find our ESG report on IdaCorp's website under the About Us page, then by clicking on ESG Information. We think you will be happy with the company's direction and accomplishments that are highlighted in the report, and we welcome your feedback. The slides that accompany today's call are also available on IdaCorp's website. We will refer to those slides by number throughout the call today. As noted on slide two, our discussion today includes forward-looking statements, including earnings guidance and spending forecasts, which reflect our current views on what the future holds but are subject to several risks and uncertainties. This cautionary note is also included in more detail for your review in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today, and we caution against placing undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. As shown on slide three, on today's call we have Lisa Groh, IDACORPS President and Chief Executive Officer and Brian Buckham, IDACorp's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In addition to Lisa and Brian, we have other members of our management team available for a Q&A session after Lisa and Brian provide updates. Slide 4 shows our quarterly financial results. IDACorp's 2022 first quarter earnings per diluted share were $0.91, an increase of $0.02 per share from last year's first quarter. The first quarter results are IDACorp's highest in more than two decades. Today, we also affirm our previously issued full year 2022 IDA Corp earnings guidance estimate to be in the range of $4.85 to $5.05 per diluted share, with our expectation that Idaho Power will not need to utilize this year any of the additional tax credits that are available to support earnings under its Idaho regulatory settlement stipulation. These affirmed estimates assume historically normal weather conditions over the balance of the year. I'll now turn the call over to Lisa.

Thanks, Justin, and thanks to everyone joining us on today's call. I'll begin my remarks with an update on customer growth, which remains strong across the Idaho Power Service Area. As noted on slide five, our customer base has increased 2.6% since the first quarter of last year, as Idaho continues to be one of the fastest growing states in the nation, according to U.S. Census data. The economy within Idaho Power Service Area also continues to outperform national trends. Moody's predicts sustained economic growth going forward. The forecast calls for GDP growth of 2.4% in 2022 and a robust 5.1% in 2023. Unemployment within Idaho Power Service Area is at 2.7%, below the 3.6% reported at the national level. Employment in our region has grown approximately 7.8% since Q1 of last year. New connection requests continue to come in at a steady pace. In addition to the 960,000 square foot metadata center facility announcement we mentioned during the Q4 earnings call, several large load customers announced projects in Idaho Power's service area during Q1 of this year. Examples include the Stowe Company, which plans to build a 550,000 square foot manufacturing plant for its closet and storage solutions business and the new Red River Logistics Center near Boise, which at 900,000 square feet would become the largest industrial spec building in Idaho. The spec building that has been taking place is, to us, reflective of the confidence of developers in the continued in-migration of businesses to Idaho. We are also working to formalize a new rate class for large-scale cryptocurrency mining customers, which we believe would help mitigate financial risks for the company and our other customers. The new rate class will establish parameters for speculative high-density load customers evaluating Idaho Power's service area for operations. We currently have not forecasted significant cryptocurrency mining load in our forecast. But given the level of inquiries we have experienced in the past, it is important for Idaho Power to address items like disruptible service and separate pricing for this class as we are already building out considerable infrastructure to meet existing load growth. Turning to slide six, Idaho Power continues to pursue its Clean Today, Cleaner Tomorrow goal of providing 100% clean energy by 2045. Our 2021 IRP contemplates Idaho Power ending coal operations at the Jim Bridger Power Plant by the end of 2028, which will be the final coal units in our fleet. We've made a filing in Idaho requesting recovery beginning June 1 of this year of an accelerated depreciation schedule for all coal-related investments at Bridger. In the meantime, we are working with our co-owners and regulators to convert Bridger Units 1 and 2 to cleaner natural gas by 2024 to operate through 2034. This conversion would help meet regional Hays compliance targets and reduce carbon emissions while continuing to ensure reliable electric service for customers. We have removed the anticipated Gatch-related assets from our regulatory request. As I have mentioned on recent earnings calls, a critical part of our clean future depends on enhanced transmission. We remain very focused on the ultimate success of the Boardman to Hemingway project, for which we noted last earnings call, Idaho Power signed a non-binding term sheet with B2H's other two participants, Bonneville Power Administration and Civic Corps, that would transfer BPA's share of the project to Idaho Power. We still expect to finalize B2H permitting by the end of this year, with the line planned to be in service no earlier than 2026. We also awarded a contract for construction consulting services and are working on definitive agreements with the co-participants for our purchase of EPA shares. Idaho Power recently announced plans to install 120 megawatts of battery storage to help maintain reliable service during periods of high demand while moving us toward our clean energy goal. The batteries, which would be the first utility-scale storage array in Idaho, were requested in last week's certificate of public convenience and necessity filing with the Idaho Commission. The batteries are scheduled to come online by June 2023 and would help fill Idaho Power's additional 2023 energy capacity resource needs mentioned during previous calls. The project is the result of the RFP we issued last June. To help address the capacity deficits projected in the IRP for 2024 and 2025, Idaho Power has been pursuing multiple options and issued an RFP last December. In March, we received more than 50 proposals in response to that RFP, including our own self-billed options. And we will be analyzing these submissions over the next several months. Depending on the RFP results, the timing of project and service dates, and the outcome of regulatory proceedings, Idaho Power expects it could invest over $400 million in capital expenditures from 2022 through 2025 for these resource additions to help meet the projected capacity deficits. Our power resource needs continue to evolve, and we hope to have more to share later this summer. As Brian will discuss in a moment, effective cost management remains a key component of sustaining our financial success. As we've accomplished in the past, we are striving to keep our operations and maintenance expenses relatively flat with last year. I appreciate our employees' efforts to control costs and operate within budgets as we work to address growth in our service area and the inflationary pressures we are all experiencing. On our last earnings call, we acknowledged the approaching need for Idaho Power to file a general rate case in Idaho and Oregon. While we have begun planning for our near-term general rate case, a variety of factors, including our expected growth in rate base, in-service dates of major capital investments, effective cost management, and economic conditions and their influence on customer growth projections, all play significant roles as we evaluate the need and timing of future general rate cases. Slide 7 shows a recent outlook of precipitation and weather from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Current weather projections for June through August suggest we will likely see warm, dry conditions this summer. Drought conditions remain across our service area. And while some late arriving snow in April and now into May have helped boost our snowpack and reservoir storage numbers, Projections for the clean, low-cost hydro generation that has traditionally been our largest single-generation resource remain on the low side, with our updated 2022 hydro forecast currently estimating between 5 and 6.5 million megawatt hours. With that, I will hand things over to Brian for a financial overview.