Q1 2025 Southern Co Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Greg MacLeod; Director, Investor Relations; Southern Co

Chris Womack; Executive Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; Southern Co

Daniel Tucker; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; Southern Co

Carly Davenport; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Julien Dumoulin-Smith; Analyst; Jefferies LLC

Nicholas Campanella; Analyst; Barclays

Jeremy Tonet; Analyst; JPMorgan

Andrew Weisel; Analyst; Scotiabank

David Arcaro; Analyst; Morgan Stanley

Durgesh Chopra; Analyst; Evercore ISI

Travis Miller; Analyst; Morningstar

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Paul, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Southern Company first-quarter 2025 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Greg MacLeod, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Greg MacLeod

Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, and welcome to Southern Company's first-quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me today are Chris Womack, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Southern Company; and Dan Tucker, Chief Financial Officer.
Let me remind you that we will make forward-looking statements today in addition to providing historical information. Various important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, including those discussed in our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and subsequent securities filings. In addition, we will present non-GAAP financial information on this call. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measure are included in the financial information we released this morning as well as the slides for this conference call. which are both available on our Investor Relations website at investor.southerncompany.com.
At this time, I'll turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Womack

Thank you, Greg. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. As you can see from the materials that we released this morning, we reported adjusted earnings results for the first quarter above our estimate, with year-over-year growth reflected across all our major businesses. The Southeast has a track record of economic resilience, and we continue to be encouraged by robust economic development activity that includes a sizable large load pipeline. Our state-regulated electric utilities continue to experience customer growth and the service territories that we are privileged to serve remain attractive to a wide variety of commercial and industrial customers.
Additionally, the reliability and the resilience of our vertically integrated and well-planned grid approving hard to beat and customers especially data center customers are increasingly acknowledging that reality with their enthusiasm for our electric service territories.
Before I turn the call over to Dan, we know there is a great deal of interest in tariffs and any potential implications to our business. There's clearly policy uncertainty and in turn, our assessment of tariff implications have varied. For our base capital plan, we currently estimate a range of 1% to 3% of potential cost increases with the top of the range representing the higher end of tariffs that existed for only a few days last month. among the advantages for our company of our scale as a large portfolio of suppliers and strong vendor relationships to help navigate such challenges collaboratively and proactively.
For example, while the majority of materials being sourced from Mexico and Canada qualify for zero tariffs because they comply with the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement or USMCA. The company is working proactively to get any remaining vendors or purchases compliant as well. Our full complement of potential mitigations includes existing project contingencies contractual provisions, potential regulatory approaches and options to deploy alternative resources. Our commitment to affordability, balanced with our focus on reliability could also influence the pace of our capital deployment to mitigate the impact of tariffs on our customers. Overall, we do not expect a material impact to our forecast.
Our financial outlook remains strong, and we remain focused on disciplined execution. The orderly processes and constructive regulatory frameworks in our service territories combined with our experienced team and our customer-centric business model should serve us well as we prioritize reliable and affordable energy for our 9 million-plus customers.
Dan? I'll now turn the call over to you for a financial update.