Xcel Energy (XEL) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript

Thank you, Jordan. Good morning, and welcome to Excel Energy's 2026 Second Quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Bob Frenzel, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Van Abel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In addition, we have other members of the management team in the room to answer your questions if needed. This morning, we will review our 2026 Second Quarter results and highlights, provide updated 2026 assumptions, and share recent business and regulatory updates.

Slides at a company today's call are available on our website. Some comments during today's call may contain forward-looking information. Significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our earnings release and SEC filings.

Today, we will discuss certain metrics that are non-GAP measures. Information on the comparable GAP measures and reconciliations are included in our earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Bob.

Thank you, Rupesh. Good morning, everyone. I'm often reminded of the quote that we are living in interesting times. You know, but regardless of the times, we know that access to abundant, affordable energy is highly correlated to a nation's competitiveness, its securities, economic growth, and its quality of life.

We at Excel Energy are here as we have been for over 100 years ready to meet the moment and help our customers, our states, and our country build the infrastructure we need to fuel economic prosperity and growth for decades to come. While this opportunity is extraordinary, we have not lost sight of what matters most to our customers.

We remain acutely focused on customer satisfaction and affordability, system reliability and resiliency, financial discipline, and meeting both the pace of needed infrastructure as well as the clean energy goals of our communities.

And in 2026, Excel Energy continues to demonstrate strong execution across all aspects of these priorities. Excel Energy remains the largest builder, new high voltage transmission lines in the country. That's one of the largest providers of renewable generation for our utility customers.

And during the second quarter, we invested $3 billion in over $6 billion year to date in critical generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure across all eight of our states.

This includes achieving commercial operations of Group Two of the Colorado Power Pathway and beginning construction on our 150-mile, 345-KV transmission project in the upper Midwest.

We also placed in the service phase three of our Shurko Solar Facility, bringing its total capacity to 710 megawatts, making one of the largest utility scale solar facilities in the country.

Last week, the independent monitor for our SPSRP filed a report on our selection of 2,600 megawatts of new company-owned generation, representing 70 percent of the total recommended portfolio and $6 billion of new investment needs in Texas and New Mexico.

We now have a line of sight to the $70-plus billion of total investments that we described in our five-year plan from last November, all for the benefit of our customers and our communities.

We received approval for our large-low tariff in Minnesota and made additional large-low tariff filings in Colorado and Wisconsin, and we've advanced these critical initiatives with strong focus on our customers and a commitment to keeping their bills as low as possible.

And finally, we delivered for our investors with strong second quarter earnings with $0.93 per share. We remain confident in our ability to deliver on our earnings guidance for the 22nd year in a row, continuing one of the best track records in the industry.

Regulatory execution has been a focus all year for the company. I'm proud to say that we advanced settlements and our REIC decisions in six active rate cases, all while keeping long-term bill growth at or below the rate of inflation and total energy bills amongst the lowest in the country.

This includes commission decisions in our Minnesota electric rate case and South Dakota electric rate case settlements and proposed settlements in a Colorado electric and natural gas cases, New Mexico electric and Minnesota natural gas rate cases.

At the same time, we improved and invested in programs for the most vulnerable in our community who struggle with affordability, even with our low bills.

Our settlements in our Colorado rate case provide a path to nearly double the size and participation in our energy assistance programs. While in Minnesota, our recent electric rate case significantly expands both accessibility and funding for customer assistance programs. In addition, we made integrated customer program filings in Colorado and Minnesota, which bundle voluntary customer programs into a single coordinated plan, making it easier for customers to compare options, to find rebates, and to choose solutions that best fit their needs and their budgets.

This extraordinary progress reflects strong preparation, early engagement with stakeholders and discipline execution. A regulatory strategy is consistent, invest in reliability and resiliency and cleaner energy while pursuing outcomes that are fair, transparent, balanced, and mindful of customer bill impacts.

Moving to capital delivery, we believe that Excel energy's approach to project execution is a differentiator in the industry and a benefit to our customers, enabling our ability to deliver a growing portfolio of capital investments on budget, on time, and on scope. The first part of our formula is strategic partnership. As I mentioned earlier, Excel energy is one of the largest regulated builders of renewable and dispatchable generation and the largest builder of new transmission line miles in the country.

So effective execution of projects on this scale are not new for us. Neither are the partnerships with key supply chain and EPC vendors that are needed to deliver for our customers.

What is changing is the structure and the depth of these partnerships. Over the past three to four years, we have shifted our approach to ensure that we are a partner of choice with our tier one suppliers and EPC partners over our five plus year portfolio, which includes nearly 13 gigawatts of new renewable generation and battery storage, over three gigawatts of new natural gas generation and nearly 2,000 high voltage transmission line miles.

These partnerships help ensure that we have access to the labor and equipment capacity that we need to deliver with certainty for our customers well into the 2030s.

In addition, we've consolidated and standardized major project planning and execution under one organization and strength and consistency, accountability, and visibility across our generation, transition, and distribution investments.

By using repeatable designs and strong governance, we're driving greater capital efficiency, reducing execution risk, and increasing schedule certainty across our portfolio.

Finally, we know that our people and access to critical talent is essential to long-term success. We have an incredibly talented and tenured workforce. We're also investing in workforce development through partnerships with our EPC firms, high schools, trade programs, and universities.

These efforts are supporting thousands of students, apprentices, and trainees, helping us build the skilled workforce needed to deliver projects safely and reliably while creating economic opportunity in the communities that we serve.

Accordingly, Excel energy continues to demonstrate that our regulated development team is one of the best in the industry, helping build 16 gigawatts of new generation and storage, and over 2,000 miles of new transition for our communities while keeping costs low for our customers.

Last week, the independent monitor filed its report in our SPS competitive RFP process that was seeking 1,500 to 3,000 megawatts of incremental nameplate capacity. SPS was selected to provide 2,400 megawatts of renewables and 200 megawatts of natural gas fire generation, representing 70 percent of the overall portfolio, and approximately $6 billion of investment that supports continued economic growth in Texas and New Mexico.

This portfolio allocation brings line of sight in our incremental investment plan to $10 plus billion. We're six months into our five-year plan and have already executed on the original pipeline we identified with more opportunities to come.

From here, we see additional opportunities, not in our base plan, to invest and serve our growing customer needs, including ongoing and upcoming generation RFPs in Colorado and the Upper Midwest, transmission investments in each of our operating companies, and generations to support 3 gigawatts of data center demand that we added to our target plan on our Q4 earnings costs.

Our base capital plan remained anchored in the core investments needed to retire legacy cold generation assets this decade and made critical investments into our transmission and distribution systems to support reliability, resilience, and industrial growth.

Capital investment and rising from future data center opportunities are generally ascribed to our upside plan and we're taking a disciplined approach to ensure that new low growth is supported by appropriate commercial structures and regulatory frameworks.

This includes large-load tariffs that were recently approved in Minnesota and filed in Colorado and Wisconsin, each of which protect and lower bills for existing customers while creating long-term benefits for our communities and investors.

We remain confident in our ability to deliver on our data center forecast. We have one gigawatt of data centers in operation or under construction, an additional gigawatt of data centers under signed ESA's, and we expect to secure an additional four gigawatts of data center load by year end 2027, including at least one gigawatt by the end of this year.

Our confidence is supported by the strength and depth of our customer pipeline, our proven ability to execute large-scale infrastructure projects, and a differentiated position of our service territories, which includes geographic diversity across our high-probability pipeline.

Finally, I want to highlight Excel Energy's 21st Sustainability Report, which we released this quarter. At Excel Energy, we are balancing reliability and affordability while supporting safety, economic vitality, and environmental stewardship. As our customer needs evolve and expectations of the energy system continue to grow, our responsibilities to lead with transparency, purpose, and discipline execution.

The report reflects meaningful progress at scale. Over the past two decades, Excel Energy has reduced carbon emissions nearly 60%, reduced water consumption more than 35%, and enabled nearly 14,000 megawatts of wind and solar in our system, all while maintaining a resilient grid and keeping customer bills among the lowest in the country.

As we look ahead, the energy system will continue to change with growing demand from economic development, electrification, and new large loads, but our destination has not changed. We remain committed to leading the energy transition in a way that is reliable, affordable, sustainable, and grounded in customer value. And with that, I'll turn it over to Brian.

Thanks, Bob. Good morning, everyone. Starting with our financial results, Excel Energy had strong earnings of 93 cents per share for the second quarter of 2026, compared to earnings of 75 cents per share in 2025.

Most significant earnings drivers for the quarter are as follows. Higher electric revenues due to non-field riders and sales growth increased earnings by 17 cents per share. Higher A, if you see increased earnings by 8 cents per share, lower depreciation and amortization increased earnings by 8 cents per share, and other items combined to increase earnings by 3 cents per share.

Primarily driven by positive returns in our venture capital portfolios. For the year, these returns largely offset the negative weather that we saw in the first quarter of 2026.

While setting these positive drivers, higher interest expense decreased earnings by 12 cents per share, the impacts of common equity financing decreased earnings by 6 cents per share. These financing costs reflect the funding of our infrastructure investments and discipline to maintain a strong balance sheet.

Turning their sales on a weather adjusted basis, year-to-date electric sales increased by 2.1 percent. Driven by increased activity in the energy sector and SPS and manufacturing sector across all of those. For 2026, we remain on track for full-year weather adjusted electric sales to increase 3 percent.

As we look to our financing plan, Excel energy is continuing our commitment to maintain a strong balance sheet to fund the creative growth, the balance of equity and debt.

Between our equity forward and collar contracts of our ATM program and our junior sub note issuances, we are already in front of approximately $6 billion or 85 percent of our $7 billion equity need in our base five-year plan.

And moving to guidance, we are reaffirming our 2026 ongoing EPS guidance range of $4.04 to $4.16. We remain confident in our ability to deliver 6 to 8 plus per cent long-term earnings growth with line of sight to $10 plus billion of opportunities beyond our base plan. We expect to deliver 9 plus per cent EPS growth on average through 2030.

Updates to key assumptions are included in our slides in earnings release. With that, I'll wrap up with a quick summary.

Excel energy post is strong second quarter of 2026 earnings of 93 cents per share. We continue to lead a clean energy transition while ensuring safe affordable and reliable service.

We've reached productive settlements or outcomes in six of our active cases while keeping long-term customer build growth at or below the rate of inflation in amongst the lowest in the country.

We now have line of sight to $10 plus billion of opportunities in our incremental investment plan with additional opportunities to come.

We have a formula for major project execution that combines strategic partnerships with project standardization and workforce development that will enable Excel energy to deliver projects on budget, on time, and on scope well into the 2030s.

We maintain a strong balance sheet and credit metrics and have addressed approximately 85 per cent of our base $7 billion five-year equity need.

We are reaffirming our 2026 ongoing EPS guidance of $4.04 to $4.16 per share. And finally, we remain confident in our ability to deliver 6, 8 plus per cent long-term earnings growth and expect to deliver 9 plus per cent EPS growth on average through 2030.

This concludes our prepared remarks, operator. We will now take questions.

Well, good morning and there's a lot to unpack in that multiple of questions there, so let me see if I can hit all of it. In your right, we had $7 billion of line of sight in Q1, we added $6 billion, we just simply say $10 plus billion in terms of our line of sight. Some of that will flow into the early 2030, so there's a timing component of it. But I think maybe I'll step back before talking about how I think the role forward is you look at that $10 plus billion, the vast majority of that is our generation development and we have, as Bob said, one of the best regulated generation development teams or probably the best regulated generation development teams in the business and what that does is that it creates a value to our customers in terms of bringing forward really low-cost competitive projects.

We're winning these projects through competitive RFPs, wind, solar, storage, gas, CPs, and that's due to our execution and our development team and really delivering low-cost projects for the benefit of our customers. So we're excited about what we saw in the SPS and the other RFPs and really deliver on that $10 plus billion. As I think about, you know, I said, you know, in Q1 we talked about 9% EPS growth through 2030. You heard, you picked up on the line, you'd say, 9 plus percent EPS growth through 2030.

As we think about rolling forward in Q3, we'll roll forward everything in, we'll also roll forward off of a new base, as we always do, we roll forward to a new five-year. So we'll align everything, our new capital plan, our new financing plan, and kind of a 27 to 31 view, but as you can hear, we're excited about it. I think we're in a really good place from an execution perspective in the first six months of the year.

Hey, Richard. It's Bob. Thanks for the question. You do great math. I think there's, I think about strategically where we've been in a generational investment opportunity to rethink how we power and energize our communities reliably, affordably and sustainably. And we've been tapping into the very strategic advantage that the company has to serve customers where win blows and sunshine. And as we've done that, we've been able to drive, you know, win-win for customers with a more sustainable, clean product with bills that are at or below the national average and some of the lowest in the country.

We think that will continue. As I said, my prepared remarks, you know, we've got more investment opportunity that we have line of sight to. We will need more large scale transmission in the country where the largest provider over the last 15 years, we think, will be a large provider of large scale transmission going forward and that will present long-term investment opportunities. And the partnerships with our EPCs makes us very credible whether those are direct assigned or those are competitively bid.

Similarly on the generation side, we know we have customers who value a very sustainable product. We took our Google data center deal, you know, it's largely a carbon-free portfolio of generation assets serving that customer. And as we look at that, we can do carbon-free portfolios for our customers quite cost-effectively. And we think that as energy-intensive industries look to find homes for their assets, whether they're data centers, whether they're new manufacturing, we think they'll selectively choose our territories as places to locate industrial businesses because of the type and the quality of the system that we have, the cost-effectiveness of the system and the sustainable nature of the energy that we sell. So we think at the strategic advantage we continue to lean into, we want to partner with our states in economic development and bring that to fruition as we look this decade, but really into next.

And I would just add if you look at, you know, we talked about 15-plus gigawatts of new generation that we're building over the next number of years. That's the pipeline that we think makes us a partner of choice with our EPCs. And if you think about it, you can go from standard design for projects, you go from project to project, keeping the workforce together, keeping that crew learning together, keep driving those efficiencies, and then just giving your line of sight for a long-term partnership and project execution that helps with that on-scope, on-time, on-budget. So I think it does set us up well as we look into the future for the future RFPs and how we plan to execute for the benefit of our customers.

So pretty excited about it.

Morning. Maybe just to follow up on Richard's rate-based growth outlook question, just is there anything you'd like to highlight that's changed across the portfolio with the upcoming plan versus the prior, whether it's, you know, improved lag through rate case processes and trackers or sales growth visibility, would that change at all, how you're viewing the delta between rate-based growth and EPS growth and how we should be thinking about that 40% financing function for equity?

Hey, Nick. As I think, you know, we've always talked about kind of long-term, you see that 250-bits difference between rate-based growth and EPS growth, and I don't think that has changed with our kind of construction of projects or opportunities. Like I said, we'll certainly roll forward everything in Q3 and including a new sales growth plan. So, but I don't see anything that we've announced changes that, you know, we remain focused on execution. You know, certainly there's, you have a little bit more delta between rate-based and EPS growth in the near part of our plan, and that closes from just given our equity financing plan, some catch-up in terms of some ROE improvements in Colorado as we think about working through the rate cases that we talked about.

So, but overall long-term, nothing's changed in terms of that kind of construct that you asked about.

Yeah. So that, yeah, that should be a fourth-quarter update by end of year. So we'll certainly, just depending on the timing of that, whether it makes it into our Q3 plan or not, but we'll certainly provide visibility when we make that recommendation filing to the commission. So we'll work through that and just be very explicit about kind of, you know, where it sits in our Q3 plan, but it might be a little bit early in terms of Q3 call.

Yeah, Carly, if I just think about kind of, you know, we've had really good success, you know, our operating companies and the regulatory teams have worked really hard with the parties as you think about reaching settlements across a number of our states. So we certainly appreciate the engagement of all the parties as you work through settlement. Obviously, there's a lot of call constructive give and takes that goes into it. And hopefully our commissions recognize the give and takes. And what we think is, you know, we put forward with the settlement, we think it's the public interest. So, you know, we'll hope for our commission to see that and that we get the constructive decisions coming out of the commissions here in the next few months.

Yeah. If you think of just our guidance changes, certainly we had a significant change in depreciation guidance. That's earning neutral, just given the change in the nuclear degree depreciation lives of our nuclear plants in the Minnesota Ray case. And then, you know, we had just some give and takes in terms of lower rider revenue, but that's offset by higher AFEDC. So, really not much change from a guidance perspective when I look at it from a bottom line earnings perspective. So, we, like I said, we have a good start. We feel really good about our first six months of the year. And our just regular cadence is we tighten guidance in Q3. So, but just, you know, we're sitting here, Octogus are for the first part of the year.

Sure. It's Bob. Look, really excited about the portfolio we have. I would say our high probability portfolio of 20 gigawatts.

We are focused largely in the upper midwest and in the southwest in the near term. And we see projects in the backlog in the portfolio, both in both camps, honestly. We see everything from urban data centers in the 10 to 20 megawatt range to 1000 megawatt campuses across our portfolio.

It's hard to say exactly what will happen. I think that our customers are largely aligned. We spend a lot of time with the hyperscalers and the big data center developers. They're largely aligned to larger campuses for scale benefits, and then we're equipped and prepared to move in that direction. And we see scale campuses in the regions that I mentioned.

We also have people who are looking for maybe, it's hard to say, 200 to 300 megawatts are more modest, but we have more modest projects in our portfolio as well. And so we'll bring them forward as we get to execution. We'll feel great about our guidance on a gig this year and three next.

Maybe I'll just answer a little bit higher level. Certainly, you know, when we look at these longer-term prospects, and you look at our incremental portfolio, renewables will be in service by the end of 2030. We need to make sure that we capture the production tax credits for the benefit of our customers. And so when you look at the renewables that we're moving forward, those in the incremental pipeline would be before, or by the end of 2030, so certainly captured in our five-year plan. Certainly, some of the larger transmission may slip out a little bit past 2030 as we think about the size and scale of that bill than just getting through all the processes.

But overall, we feel really good about what's in the five-year plan. But then also, just if I think about longer-term, it's a little bit what Bob was talking about is when we look at data centers here at Gigawatt, but then this year and three additional gigawatts end of next year, that's really going to drive a lot of incremental opportunities in the early 2030s as you think about, you know, they may energize by the end of the decade, but when they need the energy and when they ramp, it's going to be well into the 2030s. So it's how do we think about extending this growth opportunity?

But that bill of opportunity also comes with it, affordability benefits for all of our current customers, community benefits, so when you do data center development right. And so we're pretty excited about that opportunity, not only from a growth perspective for investors but just an affordability benefit for our current customers as we think longer-term.

I think just one thing to add to Brian's comment is if we think about data center development, particularly in our resource-rich areas, you know, if you have a gigawatt of data centers, you have choices to power with 100% natural gas, I would suggest that in our regions, it's going to be largely wind, solar, storage, and backup gas, which leads to, you know, for every gigawatt of a data center, you're looking at something like, you know, five to six billion dollars of investments on the generation side and maybe more. So as we think about that ramp that Brian talked about, the data center ramp, the generation ramp that follows that will be capital investment late this decade, but probably extending well into next decade as well as well as the transmission needed to support that.

So there's real investment opportunities in the next decade as we see on our radar.

Good morning, Julian.

Appreciate the question and the recognition that, you know, wildfire is a statewide issue, a tragedy in many cases for the community that it impacts. And I think is everybody in this room and on the call know that that, you know, with a low snow pack year and winter last year and drought conditions that continue, that the conditions in Colorado were challenging.

I'm really proud of what we've been able to do operationally in Colorado. We have executed with excellence from a sheer wildfire mitigation plan effort at Excel Energy. We had laid out four focus areas for our company. First and foremost, the situation awareness, making sure we understand localized weather patterns and are able to communicate that in localized areas to our customers.

We have over the course of the last year installed over 50 AI enabled cameras to help not only our situation awareness, but real response to the offices of emergency management at the city and the county levels, which is really helping manage and get early detection of risk areas in the state. The second is weather stations. We put it over almost 300 weather stations in Colorado. And we are performing at a level of excellence in meteorology that it also benefits us, but it also benefits the entirety of the state and the region by which we operate in, and making sure that not only is the Excel Energy territory protected, but the entirety of the state.

Operational mitigants is the second big bucket. This is EPSS and PSPS activities in the state and in the region. We have seen more EPSS days than we have last year, and we've had more PSPS events this year than we had last year. Those are enormously valuable risk-reducing mitigants in the state, protecting our communities and our customers as we experience the wildfire regime that we sit in this year.

All the while, we're spending a lot of time, money, and effort hardening our system. That's the third bucket of system hardening, whether it's pole inspections, pole replacements, you know, insulators, non-explosive fuses, you name it, working on our system to harden it, to segment it, to make it more resilient to the operating environment we find ourselves in. And the fourth is really communication with customers and making sure that we have a deep understanding of our customers' needs, who has, you know, durably medical equipment that needs protection, what are our critical customers, not just on the residential side, but on the community side, community centers, you know, offices of emergency management, and making sure we can maintain services to those while we protect the other customers in the event.

We have a EPSS or a PSPS event. We've executed across those four buckets with excellence this year, and really proud of what we've done to protect our communities. The state has had some wildfires and some, you know, has had to deal with, you know, managing those, but we've spent a lot of time making sure that our system, our communities, and our customers are protected. As we roll into 27, 20, 27, two things and highlight for you, you mentioned one about state level legislation. Obviously a priority for the company. We've had legislation in the Dakotas, Texas, and looking at other states as well. Colorado will be a focus area for us in 2027, and we're working with legislators and stakeholders on that as we speak.

The second is another wildfire mitigation plan. So this plan was a three-year plan. We end at the end of 2027. We expect to file another wildfire plan with the commission in the early part of 2027 with our plans for moving past this investment cycle and what we do next based on lessons learned and things we've seen in the season. So a long answer, Julian, but we are working really hard on making sure we can protect our communities and protect our infrastructure.

Yeah, thank you for the question. You know, we've been a leading provider transmission new construction in the country. I think by that map, I said this in the last call, we might be building 20% of the 765 lines in the country that we know of as the ITP comes out. In the next tranche, we would expect meaningful investment opportunity for us, given our skill and our background and our capability to deliver with excellence and with cost effectiveness. The region itself is really attractive from a resource perspective. And I think we see a lot of interest from data center developers and hyperscalers around locating data centers there. I mean, our SPS business is maybe one of the lowest enough, the lowest CNI rates in the country.

And we see real attraction from data center developers for the infrastructure we have and the cost effectiveness that we have down there. That will take more transmission in SPS. You know, we are at the South and western end of the Southwest Power Pool and making sure that we have a reliable grid to attract development. But not just data centers, we're seeing enormous growth in the Permin and the Delaware basins from our oil and gas customers and including additional electrification of oil and gas loads. So real growth down in SPS, not just from data centers and a need to harden the grid and bring new generation there. You see that playing out in RFPs, IRPs, and I think you'll see a play out in the SPP, ITPs.

Is that enough acronyms for everybody?

And Julie, and just Bob hit it well, is our growth, the RFPs that we just had in SPS. That's really there to serve the oil and gas growth in Permian Basin. And so we think about Bob said in his opening comments, we really have a diverse growth plan. We are just not anchored on data center growth. Our base plan is very little data center growth baked into it. So that is all potential. Upside is how we think about longer term. And so we don't have any of that longer term transmission opportunities in our base plan. We see that as certainly helping well into 2030s as we look at the significant investment that will be needed in the backbone transmission in that region.

Yep, yep, you're absolutely correct. And as Bob said, there's been a growing interest in that region from a data center perspective as we look at it and see our pipeline. Obviously, you have a lot of land out there, a lot of territory to build and so growing interest there, along with really good renewable resources and access to a lot of gas.

Hey, Sophie. Bob, thanks for the question. I think on the record as an unabashed fan of nuclear energy in the country, and I think we as a country absolutely need to have a energy policy, an industrial policy, to manage both new build as well as a supply chain in the fuel cycle around that. When I step back and think about Excel energy, based on the comments you've heard from us before, we have amazing access to wind and solar resources in the regions that we serve, and when I look out into the horizon, we've always said we needed, when we committed to being a carbon free company by mid-decade, mid-century, sorry, we always said we needed new dispatchable carbon free technologies, nuclear and advanced nuclear being one of those geothermal being another and carbon capture and sequestration being a third.

We still haven't seen real commercialization of those technologies, although they're on the come for sure. We don't see a need in our resource plans for new nuclear in the near term. In fact, we're quite confident our ability to meet the growing needs we have with a big portfolio of wind solar storage and gas fired backups, but that doesn't stop me from being an advocate for what I think the country needs and the policies I think we need to support them. We will not be an early adopter of new nuclear power on the large board tariffs, clearly not a major driver for your plan, but a source of upside.

Hi, Sophie. I can take that question. We just recently, earlier this year, got our large load tariff approved in Minnesota. That was a constructive outcome. We worked with some of the hyperscalers that helped wrap that. A lot of our large load tariffs look and feel similar to that. Obviously, there's a nuances across our territories, but really focused on customer protections and making sure we have the right contract provisions given the potential size of these contracts. We certainly pay attention in terms of, I think, you could be alluding to the large load tariff proceeding to our east here. When we think about our large load tariff filing in Wisconsin, we look at the provisions and we look at an overall package we put forth.

We think that is really well constructed and feel good about what we put for. Some of it has more strict provisions in it than maybe some of our peers had. So we feel good about what we put forward and looking forward to working with our stakeholders to get these approved. We also, the couple, we have talked about those, we filed. We're also working in, we'll be filing in Texas and New Mexico. Our large load tariffs certainly appreciate some of the letters and things that have gone on in Texas and making sure we address that and incorporate that into our large load tariff filing in Texas. We should get filed here in Q3.

Good morning, Steve.

Hey, Steve, you know, I'm thinking back, we did provide a 10 year capital plan. I threw a number of years ago. And so that is something that we've done before. You know, we'll continue to evaluate it. You know, I think you could argue, I certainly appreciate people's, you know, perspectives on that. But, you know, it is something we evaluate. We certainly look at the 10 year. And I think that's a little bit of how we think about we give our long term EPS growth guidance, we say six to eight plus percent. And that's much more than a five year view. So we'll continue to evaluate that. But, you know, when we look out beyond the five years beyond 2030, we're really thinking about 2030 to 2035.

And like you alluded to, that's really where some of our data center strategy comes in. And so, you know, we'll work through that. But I think right now we'll continue to provide a five year, but also call our on maybe a longer term if that's helpful.

Well, so we continue to work with the stakeholders on that. You're talking about the Google progress. We filed the, the proceeding with the commission. There's a lot of stakeholder support for that project community support, over a billion dollars of customer benefits. And we're committed on it moving forward. So it'd be like we expect the schedule on the commission proceeding should hopefully get approval early in 2027. So overall, moving forward, excited to bring that project to our community.

There's a lot of investment that Google's making investments and STEM education, investments in a distributed capacity program that's industry leading here in Minnesota. So looking forward to moving that forward. And we'll continue to work with that with our parties. You know, overall, you know, when we think about it, we think the environmental review is consistent with Minnesota and we'll continue to work with that party to make sure we can move forward with that project.

Thanks, Steve.

Hey, it's Bob. Yeah, I'll just reiterate kind of what Brian said, you know, real community support for the Google data center here in Minnesota down in Pine Island. We've had great feedback, real customer benefits, and I think we'll have our opportunity to put that in front of that. I know we put it in front of the commission. We expect the commission to take that up in early part of next year and expect to move forward on that project. And excited about that. And excited about that as a project that we could replicate across our country, our companies in the company. So it is a highly renewable project which we have access to, wind, solar, storage, gas plants.

We can replicate projects like that in our Colorado company. We can replicate projects like that in our SPS company. We're seeing interest from other hyperscalers and data center developers that want a project that looks like that in various parts of our territory. So we're excited about that as a template and hopefully we use that amongst our large load pairs as we move forward. Second part of your question was really election cycle. You know, it's certainly a busy cycle in the country. It's a busy cycle across Excel, energy, and R8 States. And you know, by and large, you know, we've shown that we can manage our business through various political backdrops. As I think about our company, we don't really see a significant change in backdrop through the election cycle.

You know, we serve H States. Half of them probably lean a little bit more progressive and the other half lean a little bit more conservative. We've probably got mixed sticks through the election cycle and we'll prepare to, you know, continue to have an infrastructure build plan and work with any administration to make sure we can execute on our capital investment plans for the benefit of our customers and community.

Yeah, thanks. I mean, when you step back and think philosophically of what we're trying to accomplish with data center customers, you know, we expect data centers to pay their full and fair share of the cost to serve them as a company. And when the data center shows up and needs new generation, you know, that's how we would expect that to be paid in Minnesota. We call it a clean energy accelerator charge. It could take a bunch of different names and packages, but basically, you know, new large load customers will pay for the generation and they need to serve them in the pay for the interconnection that they need to serve them and customers will get the benefit of having, you know, more load on a fixed asset like the grid.

And that's how you show real customer benefit over time is spreading the cost of fixed assets amongst more units of production. And that's philosophically how approaching large loads. It'll take different names and shapes in different states, but I think that's how we think about protecting our customers, driving economic benefit in the States, and bringing new assets and new infrastructure to our region.

Yeah, just add if you look at our large load terrifying in Colorado, we really have kind of two pathways to bring large loads forward. And one creates kind of speed and flexibility focused on that we didn't call it the clean energy accelerator in Colorado, but really very similar opportunity. Colorado is really interesting in terms of the geothermal resources that you have from a clean energy perspective. So, you know, when we think about what we did in Minnesota, it's really just kind of a really good way to frame up both how we drive and help drive state policy and customer benefits together. And so, we're excited about what we can do and expect similar concepts across our state, across our states.

Thanks all for participating in our earnings call this morning. Please contact our investor relations team with any follow-up questions. Thank you.

This concludes today's meeting. We may not disconnect.