Alliant Energy Corporation Common Stock 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Good morning, and thank you for joining Alliant Energy's Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me today are Lisa Barton, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Robert Durian, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. Last night, we issued a news release announcing our Third Quarter 2026 results, narrowed our 2026 full-year earnings guidance, initiated 2027 earnings guidance and dividend target, and provided our updated CapEx and financing plans through 2030. That release, along with our earnings presentation, will be referenced during today's call and is available on the Investors section of our website at alliantenergy.com. Before we begin, please note that today's remarks and responses will include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

Those risks are described in last night's earnings release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, this presentation contains references to ongoing earnings per share, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Reconciliations to GAAP results are provided in the earnings release available on our website. At this point, I will turn the call over to Lisa.

Hello, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to share strong third quarter and year-to-date results and measurable progress against our growth strategy. We have also updated our outlook for the remainder of this year and 2027, refreshed our CapEx and financing plan, and accelerated and extended our earnings growth expectation plans through 2030. Alliant Energy is experiencing extraordinary momentum, fueled by rising customer demand and economic development. As the communities we serve continue to grow and thrive, reliable, affordable energy is more essential than ever to their long-term success. We are operating from a position of strength, building on our consistent track record of growth and delivering dependable results our investors can count on.

That strength is rooted in the Alliant Energy advantage, constructive regulatory jurisdictions, flexible resource planning, practical and pragmatic leadership at the state and community levels, and an organization focused on unlocking the potential of our customers and communities, while keeping affordability at the forefront. Today's update shows how that advantage delivers dependable growth, benefits customers, and provides investment opportunities beyond our current plan. First, we have greater visibility into our growth outlook. Five data centers support our expectation for greater than 60% contracted demands growth by 2031. Three are actively under construction. Google is taking transmission service with a load ramp consistent with the accelerated schedule we filed with the Iowa Commission. QTS Cedar Rapids expects to complete the commissioning of their first two buildings later this quarter. In Wisconsin, Meta is taking distribution service with an expectation to take transmission service Q1 2027.

As a reminder, we proactively identify locations where large loads can interconnect without significant incremental transmission investment, supporting speed to power, helping customer affordability, reducing execution risk, and strengthening our competitive position. We have maintained a high bar for including new opportunities in our financial outlook. A signed electric service agreement remains important, but we also require clear visibility into land, transmission, generation, and going forward, we are also including local permitting as part of the higher bar. As large load projects have increased in scale and complexity, we are raising the bar, not just on what we include in our disclosures, but on the rigor behind it. Our objective is not to present the biggest number, but to provide investors with the greatest confidence in the executability of our growth.

That disciplined approach in determining when to include projects in our CapEx plan is what we mean by dependable growth investors can count on. In the first quarter, we announced an executed electric service agreement of new demands. We are pleased to share that the agreement supports Google's expansion at its Cedar Rapids, Iowa site. That opportunity has now met our planning threshold and is one of the projects supporting our refreshed resource plan. We are also seeing progress across a diversified set of load opportunities beyond large data centers, including edge data centers and manufacturing expansion in Wisconsin and Iowa. Based on our discussions with Mesabi Metallics, the company expects to locate its plants in our service territory in Lee County. As is consistent with this industry, a significant portion of its load is anticipated to be curtailable.

Consistent with our approach to grow at the pace of our customers, we align our capacity resources with customers' non-curtailable needs. Mesabi's initial capacity needs are reflected in our refreshed plan. Any future phases of this project would require additional resources. Second, our growth is translating directly into infrastructure investment and earnings growth. Our refreshed capital investment plan through 2030 is 19% higher than last year's plan. The diversified plan includes natural gas generation, renewables, energy storage, and grid investments that strengthen reliability and position our system for growing customer demand. This increases our expected investment growth rate to 13% and supports an acceleration of our long-term earnings growth rate to 8%+ from 2027 through 2030. Just as importantly, customers benefit from how we structure this growth. Our commitments are clear. Existing customers should benefit from large load growth, not subsidize it.

Large load customers will pay the full cost of serving them and their share of the system investments they require. In Iowa, we are pleased to announce a one-year extension of IPL's retail electric base rate stability plan through the end of 2030, giving customers another year of greater certainty about this portion of their electric bill. At the same time, we expect to continue investing in our business and earning our authorized returns throughout this period. This extension is a tangible, best-in-class example of driving affordability and demonstrates that base rate stability, continued investment, and financial performance can advance together. In Wisconsin, economic development creates an opportunity to spread fixed system costs across a broader customer base, and our recently filed large load tariff establishes a consistent and transparent framework for future customers.

In addition to advancing Iowa's electric base rate stability with the one-year extension, our financing strategy directly supports affordability in both Iowa and Wisconsin. Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it had closed on a $5.1 billion guaranteed loan program with Alliant Energy. Over the life of the 30-year loans, when fully funded, we estimate up to $1.2 billion of cumulative customer savings when compared to traditional debt financing. This federally backed financing helps lower the cost of building generation and critical energy infrastructure our customers depend on while strengthening the grid. Finally, our pipeline extends well beyond our current plan. To date, we have three sites which total 3.4 gigawatts of load growth. Across our service territory, we are focused on turning prospects into projects.

We expect this work to produce approximately one additional gigawatt of contracted large load within the next six months, creating meaningful upside to our current capital plan. Consistent with our commitment to raise the bar, we would update our CapEx plan accordingly. Taken together, these updates demonstrate the Alliant Energy advantage in action, the ability to convert economic development into durable growth while driving affordability, strengthening reliability, and earning our authorized returns. Before I turn the call over to Robert, I want to recognize our employees, from our field teams responding to storms and maintaining our diverse generation fleet, to those advancing critical projects and supporting customers. Their skill, dedication, and care drives our progress. I am proud of this team and grateful for all they do. We have built strong momentum.

We have greater visibility into our long-term growth, and we remain focused on disciplined execution our investors and customers can count on. I'll now turn the call over to Robert.

Thank you, Lisa, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday, we reported third quarter 2026 GAAP earnings of $1.52 per share. Our third quarter and year-to-date ongoing earnings demonstrate the strong financial and operational progress our teams have delivered across the business.

As shown on slide 8, the year-over-year third quarter increase in ongoing earnings reflects the consistent execution of our strategy, primarily driven by higher revenue requirements in AFUDC associated with capital investments across our Iowa and Wisconsin utilities, timing of income tax expense, which will reverse in the fourth quarter and have no impact on full-year results, higher equity earnings from our corporate venture fund investments, $0.05 per share impact on electric margins from above-normal summer temperatures this year compared to $0.03 per share in the same period last year, and higher temperature-normalized retail electric sales, reflecting continued commercial and industrial strength, particularly in Wisconsin, and early contributions from ramping data center loads in Iowa.

These positive drivers were partially offset by the expected costs of supporting our growth, including higher other operations and maintenance expenses related to the growth of our business and expanded generation fleet, and higher financing and depreciation costs associated with our growing rate base. Based on our strong performance through the first 9 months and improved visibility into the fourth quarter, we are narrowing our 2026 full-year ongoing earnings guidance to the top half of our original guidance range, which is $3.41 to $3.46 per share. Yesterday, we announced our 2027 earnings guidance range and dividend target as shown on slide 9. Together, they reinforce our confidence in continuing to deliver an attractive total shareholder return, which is projected to be greater than 11% per year over the 2027 to 2030 planning period.