“Overall, we are extremely pleased with our performance through the first half of 2026 and are firmly on track to achieve full year results within our EPS guidance range.”

In context

“Brian Savoy (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer): Thanks, Harry, and good morning, everyone. As shown on Slide 8, we continue to execute our strategy at an accelerated pace while delivering strong growth with reported and adjusted earnings per share of $1.38 and $1.43, respectively, compared with $1.25 for both reported and adjusted earnings per share in the prior year. Electric Utilities and Infrastructure was up $0.15, driven by continued customer growth as well as infrastructure investments to reliably serve our growing jurisdictions. These drivers were partially offset by higher depreciation expense associated with our growing asset base and higher interest expense. Gas Utilities and Infrastructure was largely flat year-over-year, consistent with expectations in a shoulder quarter. Finally, the Other segment was up $0.03 compared to the prior year, primarily due to the expected benefit of lower interest expense resulting from the Tennessee and Florida transaction proceeds, which have reduced holding company financing needs as well as higher market returns. Favorable weather has also contributed to our strong results through midyear with a colder-than-normal first quarter, then quickly shifting to a hot second quarter. Our generating assets performed well during these periods of high demand, contributing positively to our results. As we look forward to the back half of the year, we may have the opportunity to reinvest some of the weather benefits back into our generating facilities to ensure these assets continue operating well for our customers. This would be consistent with our demonstrated ability to exercise O&M agility in both directions over the past several years. The robust growth in the quarter is a result of accelerating execution of our strategy and the strength of our fully regulated utility model, which serves attractive jurisdictions with vibrant economies and constructive regulatory environments across the Southeast and Midwest. Overall, we are extremely pleased with our performance through the first half of 2026 and are firmly on track to achieve full year results within our EPS guidance range. Turning to Slide 9. We continue to progress additional large load projects through the pipeline. We have now secured 7.8 gigawatts of electric service agreements with data center customers. The Customer Protection Plus commitment we announced in July reinforces the foundation from which we engage with large load customers. The ESAs we've signed protect existing customers today and deliver value for everyone over time as fixed costs are spread over a larger base. Beyond data center activity, we continue to see strong interest from a diverse set of commercial and industrial sectors, including life sciences and advanced manufacturing. In just the first half of this year, we've secured economic development wins representing $5 billion of investment, supporting over 9,000 jobs across our service territories. This broad-based economic development success provides us with increasing confidence in our long-term load growth projections and underscores the need to bring additional generation onto the system to reliably serve our customers. Moving to Slide 10. Our teams are working with prospective customers to advance large load projects. And we continue to expect the remainder of the 15.4 gigawatt pipeline to be converted to ESAs by the first half of 2027. As Harry mentioned, the contracts we've signed to date in the Carolinas have increased the load forecast to the high load case. We continue to advance our late-stage pipelines in other jurisdictions as well. As additional contracts are signed, there is $5 billion to $10 billion of upside to our current five-year capital plan to support additional generation and transmission needs, particularly in Indiana and Florida. Our first priority will always be to protect existing customers and ensure large loads provide value to the system. We look forward to sharing more as the pipeline advances over the coming quarters. As you can see on the right side of the slide, customers are also making strong progress building their facilities with several moving to vertical construction. We continue to expect these customers to begin taking energy as early as the second half of 2027 and into 2028 and ramp into their full contracted load through the early 2030s. Infrastructure to support these customers is on track. As a reminder, our contracts contain minimum take provisions, which serve as the basis for revenue growth projections. This is just one of the many ways we are protecting existing customers while ensuring the growth ahead provides shared benefits for all. Turning to the balance sheet on Slide 11. We are on track to achieve our FFO to debt target of 14.5% for the year. Longer term, we expect to reach 15% FFO to debt as additional proceeds from the DEF minority interest investment are received. This FFO to debt target has substantial cushion to our downgrade thresholds, provides financial flexibility and serves as a solid foundation as growth accelerates later in the five-year plan. We've also priced $600 million under the ATM program so far this year, which will settle at the end of 2027. We are taking a proactive approach to equity funding, locking in attractive pricing today to de-risk our future equity needs. Finally, we understand the importance of the dividend for our investors. In July, we increased our quarterly dividend payment, marking over 20 years of consecutive annual dividend increases. The 2% increase is consistent with growth in recent years and shows our ongoing commitment to growing the dividend. Let me close with Slide 12. We are executing our strategy to seize growth opportunities, expand our generation fleet and work with stakeholders to reach constructive regulatory outcomes that support critical investments while keeping costs as low as possible. We are on track to achieve our 2026 EPS guidance range of $6.55 to $6.80 and 5% to 7% EPS growth through 2030 with confidence to earn the top half of the range beginning in 2028. We have an extensive runway of capital investments that continue to produce value for customers and position us to deliver on our growth targets, which combined with our attractive dividend yield, provide a compelling risk-adjusted return for shareholders. With that, we'll open the line for your questions.”