Q1 2025 Ameren Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Andrew Kirk; Director, Investor Relations; Ameren Corp

Martin Lyons; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; Ameren Corp

Michael Moehn; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; Ameren Corp

Jeremy Tonet; Analyst; JPMorgan

Unidentified Participant

Carly Davenport; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Paul Fremont; Analyst; Ladenburg Thalmann

David Paz; Analyst; Wolfe Research

Presentation

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Ameren Corporation first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions)
I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Andrew Kirk, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Modeling for Ameren Corporation. Thank you, Mr. Kirk. You may begin.

Andrew Kirk

Thank you, and good morning. On the call with me today are Marty Lyons, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Moehn, our Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; as well as other members of the Ameren management team.
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 2 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 statements 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 4.

Martin Lyons

Thanks, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. I will begin on Page 4. At Ameren, we remain steadfastly committed to our strategic plan, which continues to drive value for our customers, communities and shareholders. Our focus is clear: deliver reliable, affordable energy while making prudent investments in energy infrastructure.
In the first quarter of 2025, we made great strides. Key energy infrastructure investments are enhancing the reliability and resiliency of the system for our 2.5 million electric customers and more than 900,000 natural gas customers across our service territory, ensuring they have the energy they need when they need it and facilitating economic growth in the communities we serve.
Today, we'll provide an update on first quarter performance and how execution of our strategic objectives outlined on this slide are translating into tangible benefits for customers, communities and shareholders. Let's get started with details on our financial progress this quarter, which I will cover on Page 5. Yesterday, we announced first quarter 2025 earnings of $1.07 per share compared to adjusted earnings of $1.02 per share in the first quarter of 2024. The key drivers of these results are outlined on this slide.
We continue to expect 2025 diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $4.85 per share and $5.05 per share. Moving to Page 6. On our call in February, I highlighted some of our top priorities for 2025 as we invest strategically to benefit customers, enhance regulatory frameworks and optimize business processes. The Ameren team's efforts during the first quarter have already begun to yield positive results, as you can see on Page 7.
Starting off, Ongoing investments continue to improve the reliability, resiliency, safety and efficiency of service for customers while facilitating and contributing to economic growth. And as we look ahead, more will be required.
In February, we filed our analysis with the Missouri Public Service Commission, or MoPSC, supporting a change to Ameren Missouri's preferred resource plan which calls for significant investments in dispatchable natural gas and renewable generation resources as well as battery storage to ensure reliable service for our customers over the next decade.
Enabling such investments requires collaborative efforts among key stakeholders, and we believe regulatory and legislative results this year in Missouri demonstrate a commitment to fostering a constructive environment for investment, which will allow Ameren Missouri to continue to attract capital on favorable terms in order to facilitate economic growth in the state.
In April, the Missouri commission approved a constructive settlement in our electric rate review that supports necessary grid reliability investments while also maintaining customer rates that are well below national and Midwest averages.
And in April, the Missouri General Assembly and Governor enacted comprehensive energy legislation signaling that investment in the state's utility infrastructure is valued and paving the way for significant economic development within our communities and further job creation.
We're excited about the prospects for growth in Missouri and remain committed to creating lasting value for our customers, communities and shareholders through our strategic investments. Before moving on, I'd like to express my sincere appreciation to our Ameren team members who work safely and efficiently to reliably serve our customers, especially in extreme weather conditions like the cold wintery conditions we experienced in January and the wet windy, and tornetic conditions we experienced in March.
And it's worth noting that the grid hardening investments we have made in recent years performed exceptionally well, considering the severity of the storms. So far in 2025, we have prevented more than 114,000 customer outages through smart switching during major storms, equivalent to more than 30 million outage minutes avoided. For context, this means that our investments in smart technology have prevented more customer outages this quarter alone than in any full year since we began tracking these statistics in 2021.
We continue to focus on optimizing our operations to deliver safe, reliable, resilient and affordable energy to our customers. Now moving to Page 8, where we provide more in terms of the Missouri legislative update.
In April, the Governor signed Senate Bill 4, a wide-ranging energy bill into law. This bill includes multiple provisions that will support our ability to continue to meet the needs of our customers and maintain the state as an affordable and attractive place to do business.
Some of the key provisions of Senate Bill 4 include expansion and extension of plant and service accounting, or PISA, a modified integrated resource planning, or IRP process, which accelerates generation project review and requires the Missouri Public Service Commission decision, authority for the commission to grant construction work in progress for qualifying generation investments and authority for the commission to approve use of a forward test year for our Missouri natural gas business.
By extending PISA for another seven years through 2035 and expanding PISA to include new natural gas generation, our regulatory framework will continue to support investment in reliable energy for years to come better positioning Ameren Missouri future needs of our customers and communities.
Importantly, PISA's extension and expansion and the modified IRP process are expected to help key stakeholders align more quickly on generation needs and provide more certainty around future investment plans, enhancing our speed to deploy new resources for customers and communities.
Turning to Page 9 for an update on the economic development opportunities. Our team is focused on doing all we can from an energy perspective to facilitate growth in our communities. We serve a diverse regional economy that spans multiple sectors, including manufacturing, aviation and defense, food and beverage and biotechnology, among others.
In the first quarter, we successfully supported nearly a dozen projects, which will bring over $700 million of capital investment from these businesses and over 1,000 jobs across both states. In Missouri, we continue to expect approximately 5.5% compound annual sales growth from 2025 through 2029, primarily driven by increasing data center demand.
Further supporting our growth opportunities, we now have signed construction agreements with data center developers representing a total of approximately 2.3 gigawatts of future demand, up 500 megawatts from our earnings call in February. These developers have demonstrated their confidence and commitment by submitting nonrefundable payments totaling $26 million towards the cost of necessary transmission upgrades.
Subject to agreement on rate structure, potential large load customers would sign separate electric service agreements which would specify expected ramp-up schedules among other terms. We continue to expect to file for approval of the proposed rate structure with the MoPSC in the second quarter. While there's no deadline for commission approval, we are optimistic that we'll receive a decision and have an effective rate structure before the end of the year.
We're committed to working closely with regulators, customers and stakeholders to ensure we meet the evolving needs in our service territory in a responsible and sustainable manner. Our balanced approach to generation laid out in our IRP ensures reliable service to our customers, while also providing energy to serve rising customer demand and to support economic growth in our communities.
On Page 10, we provide a brief update on the 1,200 megawatts of new generation currently under development at Ameren, Missouri. These projects remain on schedule and on budget. Notably, we've executed contracts to acquire all 8 turbines and other long lead time materials needed for our next 2 simple cycle natural gas energy centers expected to be in service in 2027 and 2028.
Further, for solar energy centers under construction, including Vandalia, Bowling Green and Split Rail, nearly all imported equipment needed to execute the projects was in the U.S. prior to the April 2 trade tariff announcements, thereby limiting possible exposure to higher costs associated with announced tariffs on materials imported.
We continue to monitor the dynamic tariff situation and work diligently to deliver cost-effective energy resources for our customers. Finally, we expect to file additional certificate of convenience and necessity requests with the commission in the coming months with respect to planned investments in gas generation, solar generation and battery storage.
Moving to Page 11 for an update on MISO's long-range transmission planning portfolios. We're focused on developing proposals for the Tranche 2.1 long-range transmission planning competitive projects. We will evaluate each bidding opportunity carefully and submit bids for projects where we believe we have a competitive advantage with project design, cost and execution to deliver value for customers in the MISO region. The bid process for the $6.5 billion of competitive projects in the portfolio will take place over this year and next.
Further, MISO continues its future scenario redesign efforts which consider growing demand for energy and the effects of changing resource planning across the region. We're actively engaged in this analysis with MISO and other transmission owners and expect MISO to issue its final report on the future redesign by the end of the year.
Given this time frame, we'd expect work on the identification of Tranche 2.2 projects, which will address further transmission needs in the MISO region to commence as early as December 2025. Moving to Page 12. Looking ahead over the next decade, we have a robust pipeline of investment opportunities of more than $63 billion that will deliver significant value to all of our stakeholders by making our energy grid stronger, smarter and cleaner and powering economic growth in our communities, bringing significant tax base and jobs.
Moving to Page 13. In February, we updated our five year growth plan, which included our expectation of a 6% to 8% compound annual earnings growth rate from 2025 through 2029. This earnings growth is primarily driven by strong compound annual rate base growth of 9.2%, supported by strategic allocation of infrastructure investment to each of our business segments based on their regulatory frameworks. We expect to deliver strong long-term earnings and dividend growth, resulting in an attractive total return.
I'm confident in our ability to execute our investment plans and strategies across all 4 of our business segments as we have an experienced and dedicated team to get it done. Again, thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in Ameren. I'll now turn the call over to Michael.