Ameren 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Thank you, and good morning. On the call with me today are Marty Lyons, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Lenny Singh, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Michael Moehn, Group President of our Ameren Utilities, as well as other members of the Ameren management team, including our new Ameren Missouri President, Aaron Melda, who joined the Ameren team in June. This call contains time-sensitive data that is accurate only as of the date of today's live broadcast, and redistribution of this broadcast is prohibited. We have posted a presentation on the amereninvestors.com homepage that will be referenced by our speakers. As noted on page two of the presentation, comments made during this conference call may contain statements about future expectations, plans, projections, financial performance, and similar matters, which are commonly referred to as forward-looking statements.

Please refer to the forward-looking statement section in the news release we issued yesterday, as well as our SEC filings for more information about the various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Now here's Marty, who will start on page four.

Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to cover our second quarter performance and progress toward achieving our 2026 strategic objectives. At Ameren, we serve 2.5 million electric and more than 900,000 natural gas customers across a 64,000 sq mi territory. 10,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines across both states. Our focus is always on providing safe and reliable service while keeping costs as low as possible for our customers who depend on us to power their homes, businesses, and communities. On this page, we outline some of the exciting developments from the second quarter that we will cover during this call. Overall, our operating performance has been strong year-to-date, and our earnings and strategic accomplishments provide a solid foundation for strong results for 2026 and beyond. Turning to page five. Yesterday, we reported second quarter 2026 earnings of $1.13 per share compared to earnings of $1.01 per share in the second quarter of 2025.

The year-over-year increase reflected earnings on infrastructure investments, partially offset by the cost of increased tree trimming and energy center maintenance to improve system reliability and resiliency for our customers. We reaffirmed our 2026 earnings per share guidance, which is a range of $5.25-$5.45, reflecting solid execution across our business during the first six months of the year. Our strategy, as outlined on page six, is grounded in delivering value to the customers and communities we have the privilege to serve. By investing in and strengthening the energy infrastructure in our communities, advocating for constructive energy policies, and continuously optimizing performance to improve service quality, we are safely delivering on what matters most to our customers: reliable energy at the lowest cost possible.

Turning to page seven. Our strategy has served our customers well, improving Ameren's average reliability performance to top quartile, supporting tens of billions of dollars in annual economic impact, enhancing customer service satisfaction, and keeping our average rates below national and Midwest averages. Moving to page eight. Here we reiterate our strategic priorities for 2026. Of course, targeted and timely infrastructure investments are key to serving our customers well. As shown on the right, we invested more than $2.6 billion in energy infrastructure during the first six months of the year to maintain and enhance our quality of service. Our infrastructure investments continued to perform well, reducing customer outage frequency and duration during multiple instances of severe weather in the second quarter of 2026. Turning to page nine for an update on our economic development pipeline.

At Ameren, we're proud to provide the quality of service that is necessary to attract investment and economic growth to our region. The pipeline of economic development interest within our territory remains robust across Missouri and Illinois. In Missouri alone, we have executed 3.4 gigawatts of construction agreements, of which 2.8 gigawatts of projects now have ESAs. There's an additional four gigawatts of projects in Missouri with completed interconnection studies. Some customers with executed ESAs have also expressed interest in expanding their footprint. Across both states, a diversified pipeline of economic development opportunities continues to expand beyond the large load growth opportunities. Our economic development teams remain focused on supporting long-term business investment and job growth in the regions we serve.

Earning accreditation from the International Economic Development Council as recognition of our effective leadership, responsiveness, and strong community engagement, including robust partnerships with regional and local economic development organizations. That work is translating into tangible results across our service territory. During the second quarter, Google and Amazon announced projects in our Missouri service territory representing a combined planned investment of $25 billion. These projects are part of the 2.8 gigawatts of electric service agreements signed earlier this year. The official announcements and construction groundbreaking are important milestones. No time is being wasted on the start of construction. Consistent with the requirements of Missouri Senate Bill 4, these customers will pay for 100% of the power and infrastructure costs driven by their operations. Once operational, large load customers will contribute to paying fixed costs of the energy grid, providing long-term cost benefits for our other customers.

These projects are expected to create thousands of construction jobs for local contractors and small businesses, and once built, will directly employ hundreds of people. In addition, the projects are expected to generate billions of dollars in local tax revenues. Google and Amazon have committed millions of dollars through community benefit agreements to support new workforce development, energy efficiency, and community-focused programs both locally and across the state. We will continue to work closely with businesses interested in locating operations in our service territory to find the right solutions that meet their needs and ultimately support economic development in the region. Turning to page 10 for Ameren Missouri's sales growth expectations. Recall our long-term earnings-per-share expectations outlined in February were based on a planning assumption of 1.2 gigawatts of additional sales by the end of 2030 or a compound annual sales growth rate of 6.2% from 2026 through 2030.

As we've said before, the 2.8 gigawatts of signed ESAs represent upside to our sales and earnings forecasts to the extent customer load by 2030 ramps faster than sales included in our existing planning assumptions. Those ESAs call for sales to begin materializing in the second half of 2027, and we expect to see annual electricity sales increase by 60% from 2025 levels by the end of 2029. Turning to page 11 for an update on Ameren Missouri's generation portfolio. We are focused on maintaining a balanced mix of generation resources that meet the demands of our Missouri customers with an adequate reserve margin. Today, we are well on our way to increasing our existing generation capacity as our team executes on the generation plans outlined in our 2025 Integrated Resource Plan.

This year, a total of 350 megawatts of new solar generation has been placed in service, including the 300-megawatt Split Rail Renewable Energy Center, which began providing low-cost energy for our customers in June, one month ahead of schedule. Another 2,250 megawatts of simple cycle gas, solar, and battery storage resources have been approved by regulators, are under construction, and will begin serving customers in 2027 and 2028. In May, we filed CCN requests for nearly 1,000 additional megawatts of new solar and storage resources to begin serving customers in 2028 and 2029. This month, we filed a CCN request for the 2.1-gigawatt West Alton Natural Gas Combined Cycle facility, which is expected to be in service in 2031.

With more than five gigawatts of new resources currently under development and more in the pipeline, I'm pleased to say that our teams are well-positioned to deliver these projects on schedule for our customers. We have procured turbines for the three gas projects and have secured all critical long lead components for all of the planned energy resources I just highlighted and detailed on this page. We have executed gas supply contracts and awarded labor contracts for both simple cycle natural gas facilities. I should also note that we are acting on opportunities to enhance the reliability and performance of our existing energy centers, especially during peak periods, helping to keep customer costs as low as possible.

Before moving on, as we gain greater clarity on the new large load customer construction timelines and ramp rates and other economic development opportunities, we are sharpening our perspective on long-term sales trends and energy resource needs and costs. We remain on track to file an update to Ameren Missouri's Integrated Resource Plan in late September incorporating these perspectives. We plan to update our sales, capital investment forecasts, financing plans, and long-term earnings growth expectations on our third quarter earnings call. As new large load electric demand evolves, our focus remains on serving all customers reliably and affordably by carefully planning and executing grid upgrades, maintaining a balanced generation portfolio, and ensuring costs to serve new large load customers are appropriately allocated to and paid by such customers. Moving to page 12 for a brief transmission update.

We continue making robust investments in our region's transmission infrastructure to ensure reliability and efficiency. We expect investment levels to remain strong over time to support new large load customers and to connect the generation resources required to serve our territory reliably as regional demand grows. At the same time, we remain focused on executing our assigned and awarded long-range transmission projects from the first two MISO LRTP Tranches. In the second quarter, MISO selected our joint proposals for the WIIL and STIW LRTP Tranche 2 competitive projects located in our Illinois service territory. We have now won the opportunity to develop all competitive long-range transmission projects in our service territory within both the Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 portfolios, reflecting our strong record of designing, building, and operating high-quality transmission infrastructure at a competitive cost for our customers.