IDACORP, Inc.

Welcome to IdaCorp's fourth quarter in year-end 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 IDACorp's website our fourth quarter and year-end 2024 earnings release and our Form 10-K. The slides we'll reference during today's call are available on IDACorp's website. As noted on slide two, our discussion today includes forward-looking statements, including earnings guidance, spending forecasts, financing plans, regulatory plans and actions, and estimates and assumptions that reflect our current views on what the future holds all of which 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 any undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Our cautionary note on forward-looking statements and various risk factors are included in more detail for your review in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As shown on slide three, we have Lisa Groh, IDACorp's President and CEO, and Brian Buckham, IdaCorp Senior Vice President, CFO, and Treasurer presenting today. Also, I'm excited to introduce a new member of our investor relations team who some of you have already met. In December, we promoted John Wunderlich to investor relations manager. John has been with the company over 12 years in various roles within finance, including our financial planning and analysis team. His depth with the company, along with his strong technical background and his impressive financial modeling abilities are a fantastic addition to our team. We also have other members of our management team available for a Q&A session following our prepared remarks. Slide four shows a summary of our full year financial results. IDA Corp's diluted earnings per share were 550 compared with 514 last year. These results include additional tax credit amortization of $29.8 million for 2024 compared to no additional tax credit amortization in 2023. Today we initiated our full year 2025 IDACorp earnings guidance estimate in the range of 565 to 585 diluted earnings per share, which includes our expectation that Idaho Power will use between 60 and $77 million of additional tax credit amortization to support earnings. These estimates assume historically normal weather conditions throughout the year and normal power supply expenses. It's important to note that approximately 25 million of our expected usage of additional tax credit relates to amortization of incremental tax credits generated from Idaho Power's investment in 2023 battery storage projects, which you may recall we removed from the revenue requirement as part of our 2023 general rate case in Idaho and was also not included in the 2024 Idaho limited scope case. Now I'll turn the call over to Lisa.

Thanks, Amy, and thanks to everyone for joining our call. We have many exciting updates for you, and I will begin by celebrating our dedicated employees for their commitment to safety and for the great work they did serving our customers and our owners. We're proud to share that we had our 17th consecutive year of earnings growth as shown on slide five. And we kept our customers' lights on 99.96% of the time, despite hot summer and increasing energy demand. In fact, we set new summer and winter peaks last year. As you can see on slide six, customer growth remained strong for Idaho Power, At the end of 2024, we served nearly 650,000 customers after experiencing 2.6% customer growth. We expect growth to stay robust as our local economy continues to outperform national trends as demonstrated by the major projects under development in our area. Moody's most recent GDP calculations for Idaho Power Service Area forecast growth of 4.5% in 2025 and 3.7% in 2026. In addition, Idaho's total labor force surpassed 1 million workers for the first time in December 2024. We continue to see strong interest from businesses looking to locate and expand within Idaho Power's service area. In addition to projects in some of our core industries of food processing, manufacturing, distribution, and warehousing, we've fielded numerous requests from large, energy-intensive customers. These new projects would be in addition to our ongoing work with Meta and Micron. Idaho Power's work with those two customers is tracking ahead of schedule as we build substation and transmission infrastructure to support their needs. Last quarter, I referenced a couple of additional energy-intensive projects that signed generation and construction study agreements and were considering executing service agreements with Idaho Power. We didn't include them in our load forecast then. As an update, while the specific megawatts and online dates are confidential, one of those potential projects signed an agreement with us and we're continuing discussions on the other project. For the project that did sign, we've now included their early ramp in our load growth estimate, although much of their load comes online after 2029. On another front, we plan to start our work on upgraded infrastructure development for Perpetua Resources' recently permitted mine in central Idaho soon, which will also be a large special contract customer. We've included Perpetua in our load forecast as well. We'll need to upgrade 75 miles of transmission line to support their operations, and that's in progress. As a reminder, our large load customers pay upfront for upgrades necessary to interconnect and we work closely with them to establish timeframes that will allow us to meet their energy needs while mitigating impacts to the rest of our customers. As our customers' energy needs grow, and we work to keep our infrastructure development on pace with that growth, our regulatory strategy is vital to financing our operations, being mindful of affordability for customers, and continuing to achieve excellent results for our owners. As seen on slide 7, Our Idaho limited-issue rate case reached its conclusion right at the end of the year, with the Idaho Commission approving an overall increase of $50.1 million, or 3.7%, effective January 1. This increase will help us recover some of our costs associated with infrastructure investments and labor expenses not included in our 2023 Idaho general rate case. The Idaho Commission has also been supportive of our significant investment in the safety of our communities through ongoing enhanced wildfire mitigation efforts. As a reminder, our 2024 Oregon general rate case reached a settlement resulting in an overall increase of $6.7 million or 12.14% effective October 15, 2024. This was our first general rate case in Oregon since 2011. We will need additional rate filings to collect the level of revenue necessary to finance our operations and allow for a reasonable rate of return. And to do that, we plan to file another general rate case in Idaho in 2025, likely around the middle of the year with rates expected to go into effect in early 26. At this point, we are preparing a full general rate case in 25 as opposed to the limited scope case we filed in mid-24. Customer affordability remains a focus as we grow, and even with these recent rate increases, our prices remain 20 to 30% below the national averages as sales growth offsets a large portion of the revenue requirement increases. As we prepare our 2025 IRP, the latest five-year forecast for retail sales growth is 8.3% annually, as shown on slide eight. That's a notable increase from the already significant 5.5% growth rate we had in our 23 IRP and the 7.7% preliminary number we shared on the third quarter call last year. That annual rate could continue growing if additional large load projects move forward within Idaho Power Service Area, though they would likely come online in stages closer to 2030, based on the scale of the infrastructure needed to serve them. With potential load growth of 8.3% or larger, it's easy to see why we continue to need additional resources. We brought nearly 200 megawatts of solar and battery storage capacity online during 2024. Going forward, as shown on slide nine, we've selected several wind, solar, and battery projects, as well as power purchase agreements to meet projected load deficits through 2027. This includes a 600 megawatt Wyoming wind project, 300 megawatts of which will be our first company-owned wind resource. We have initiated an all-source RFP for resources needed in 28 and 29. The shortlist for the 28 RFP was published in early January and includes some Idaho Power projects. We expect to have an update for you on our Q3 call, if not sooner. On the transmission topic, as you can see on slide 10, We continue to make progress on the Boardman to Hemingway project and expect to break ground this summer with an anticipated in-service date of no earlier than 27. As for Gateway West, we continue to work with Pacificor to coordinate the timing of next steps to best meet customer and system needs. We anticipate a portion of the line in Idaho will be completed in 28 or later. Earlier this month, we entered into an agreement to become a partial owner of Swift North, a high voltage line that will run from the Robinson Summit substation near Easley, Nevada to our midpoint substation. Once the project is in service, Idaho Power plans to purchase an approximate 11% ownership interest. In addition, we entered into a capacity entitlement agreement for approximately 11% of additional capacity on the line over a 40-year term. We expect construction to begin as early as this year and take approximately two years to complete. Turning to slide 11, I'm pleased to share that Scott Madison has been appointed to serve on the Board of Directors of IDACOR and Idaho Power. Scott recently retired as the Executive Vice President of Business Development and Gas Supply for the MDU Utilities Group. Scott has been with MDU since 1997, and he brings extensive board experience and leadership in the areas of business strategy, finance, and customer service. His ties to Idaho and deep knowledge of the public utility sector make him a great addition to our board. I'll close with some good news on hydropower conditions. Our current snowpack above Brownlee is over 120% of average, and the other significant basins are trending above average as well. And we're expecting the snowpack to improve as snow continues to accumulate. A strong finish to the winter season will bode well for our hydropower operations, and it's so far been great for skiing as well. With that, I'll turn the time over to Brian.