IDACORP, Inc.

Welcome to IDACORP's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded and our webcast is live. A 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 Amy Shaw, Vice President of Finance, Compliance, and Risk. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining our call. This morning, we issued and posted to IDA Corp's website our first quarter 2024 earnings release and the Form 10-Q. The slides we will reference during today's call are available at IDA Corp's website. As noted on slide two, our discussion today includes forward-looking statements, including earnings guidance, spending forecasts, and regulatory plans that reflect our current views on what the future holds but are subject to risks and uncertainties. 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. This cautionary note is included in more detail for your review in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As shown on slide three, Lisa Groh, IDACorp's President and CEO, and Brian Buckham, IDACorp's Senior Vice President, CFO, and Treasurer, will be presenting today. In addition to Lisa and Brian, we have other members of our management team available for a Q&A session following our prepared remarks. Slide 4 shows our first quarter financial results. IDACorp's first quarter 2024 diluted earnings per share were 95 cents compared with the $1.11 for last year's first quarter. Our key metrics and guidance for 2024 remain unchanged except for our hydropower generation forecast, which has improved. We're reaffirming our full year IdaCorp earning guidance range in the range of 525 to 545 diluted earnings per share. This includes our existing expectation that Idaho Power will use 35 to 60 million of additional tax credits available to support earnings at the 9.12% return on equity in the Idaho jurisdiction. These estimates assume historically normal weather conditions and normal power supply expenses for the remainder of the year. Now I'll turn the call over to Lisa.

Thanks, Amy, and thanks to everyone for joining us. We're off to a good start in 2024. We had some great spring skiing this year with late storms and snow in the mountains, which has the added benefit of setting us up nicely from a hydro generation perspective. Overall, despite some good snowstorms, weather was generally mild to start the year, and we saw that in our financial results compared to last year. Still, our first quarter results were on plan. And we're on target for the remainder of the year on our financial guidance as Amy mentioned. Excuse me. Our first quarter isn't typically one of our largest revenue quarters due to seasonality, but it does help set us up for the year. Brian will address the financial drivers for the quarter and a financial look ahead in a few minutes. I want to spend some time discussing growth, project development, our regulatory strategy, and investments we're making in our system. It's an understatement to say this is an exciting time for our company, and we're energized to address the challenges and capitalize on our opportunities. We continue to see customer growth and economic expansion across the Idaho Power Service Area. As shown on slide five, our customer base has grown 2.5% since last year's first quarter. Moody's is forecasting GDP growth in our region of 4.6% in 2024 and 3.6% in 2025. We believe our low electric rates and reliability continue to help our regional economy outperform national trends. As evidence of that, in its recent Best States ranking, U.S. News & World Report ranked Idaho in the top three for growth and economic climate. Idaho Power continues to see significant interest from large projects. In terms of scale, several of them are well over 100 megawatts, and our pipeline of prospective customers is as robust as ever and on a multiple gigawatt scale. This is a great time for our economy and for our company as we work to serve incremental loads of that potential magnitude, particularly when considering our already high customer and load growth rates. Our challenge is to balance realistic timelines for building infrastructure with customers' desired in-service dates, given the permitting and supply chain constraints the industry has been experiencing. As we build infrastructure to reliably meet our growing customer base, we're also focused on maintaining affordability for our customers. Some potential new large-load customers have recently paid for their construction studies. Those studies help ensure incremental loads bear the cost of new interconnection facilities required to serve them, which helps facilitate the growth pays for growth approach that helps from an affordability perspective for all of our customers. As noted on slide six, we've had productive conversations with Oregon Commission staff and with other key stakeholders as part of our general rate case in Oregon. We recently filed a motion to suspend the case as we've reached a settlement in principle with the Oregon Commission staff and other parties to the case. Details of the settlement aren't public yet. We continue to expect the resulting price changes to go into effect this October. During our last call, I mentioned our notice of intent to file for a rate case proceeding in Idaho in 2024. After what I describe as positive discussions with the Idaho Commission staff and other key stakeholders, Idaho Power has decided to file a limited scope rate case on May 31st that will only look at capital additions through the end of 2024 plus labor increases. Also on the regulatory front, our annual spring rate adjustments call for price decreases in both Idaho and Oregon, mostly due to lower actual and forecasted power supply costs. We continue to acquire new resources to meet future demand. Turning to slide seven as part of our 2026-2027 RFP process, we procured energy through a long-term purchase agreement, and we recently filed for a certificate of public convenience and necessity for a large Idaho power-owned battery storage project. Beyond this, we continued to work through the process to negotiate with a short list of bidders, including our own submissions. As we look beyond 2027, we've initiated the RFP process for 2028 resources, and additional RFP processes will likely be necessary to fill future anticipated deficits and potentially to incorporate additional new large loads. Transmission remains vital to helping us meet demand, improve reliability, and optimize the movement of energy in the West. We've experienced regulatory permitting delays on the Boardman to Hemingway project, that will likely push the in-service date to 2027. We're continuing to work with our Gateway West partner on the timing and allocation of some segments and the overall configuration of the project. We're also pursuing an arrangement with interested parties in the Southwest Intertie project, which would create additional transmission capacity to the Desert Southwest. As we continue to work on these projects, we are evaluating the need for a dispatchable resource to address load growth. In addition, Idaho Power is planning to convert its remaining coal-fired units to natural gas, which will reduce the carbon emissions of those units by about half while maintaining their generating capacity. We recently completed the conversion of two units at the Jim Bridger Power Plant in Wyoming Those units are operational and will be available to help us serve peak load this summer. We're working with our partners to convert Balmy and address the remaining Bridger units over the next several years. This is a low-cost solution that reduces our carbon emissions while keeping dispatchable energy resources available to serve our customers. Of course, we're hard at work digesting the EPA's final rules issued last week, and we'll evaluate the impact in our analysis. It's early and we expect the rules will face legal challenges. Battery storage has already started to help us maintain reliability and affordability. The 100 megawatt Franklin solar project in southern Idaho is scheduled to come online soon and it will include an additional 60 megawatts of company-owned battery storage. These batteries, along with the 36 megawatts of batteries coming online soon at the Hemingway substation, We'll add to our portfolio of storage projects, which are already instrumental in integrating intermittent renewable resources onto our system. In closing, I'll point out that as warmer weather approaches, our team and system are ready to respond. Protecting our existing system is essential to maintaining safety, reliability, and resilience. As highlighted on slide 8, our wildfire mitigation plan is helping us harden our system. expand our situational awareness capabilities, and enhance our vegetation management program. This year, we've expanded our public safety power shutoff program zone and enhanced how we alert customers and communities about wildfire risk. We're proud of our mitigation program and we're continuously making improvements. We also continue to work with industry, federal, state, and local partners in that journey. The summer brings our highest demand days of the year, and with current hydro conditions, our balanced generation portfolio, our enhanced wildfire mitigation plan, and our talented employees, we feel ready to safely and reliably serve our customers with the energy they rely on. With that, I'll hand the presentation over to Brian for an overview of our financial results and some additional commentary.