Avista Corp (AVA) May 14, 2026 Annual General Meeting Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to Avista Corporation's 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. It's my pleasure to introduce Heather Rosentrader, President and CEO of Avista. Heather, go ahead.

Good morning. I'm Heather Rosentrader, President and CEO of Avista. Welcome to Avista's 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, and thank you for joining us. We're holding this year's annual meeting in an all-virtual format again. As we did last year, we are using this format with audio only. We've strived to make this meeting as inclusive as possible by offering our shareholders an even more accessible way to participate as compared to our past in-person meetings. So let's look at today's agenda for what we'll cover during our time together. First, we'll conduct the business portion of our meeting. If there are any shareholders who have not yet voted, you may vote during this virtual meeting by clicking on the vote button on your screen. The polls will close after the business meeting concludes. Those who are voting this morning can be assured their vote will be included in the final results. After the business portion of our meeting, as always, there will be time for you to ask questions. If you have a question, please feel free to submit your question at any time by typing it in the text box found at the lower left corner of the screen. We'll try to answer all questions submitted in connection with today's meeting. Unanswered questions will be addressed on our Investor Relations website after the meeting. As we begin this morning's meeting, I will caution you. We will be making forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which are subject to change. I direct you to Avista's Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC on February 25, 2026, and Form 10-Q, which was filed on May 4, 2026, for reference to the various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. You can find those documents on our website. Before I start the business portion of the meeting, I'd like to introduce our board members. I feel very fortunate to have board members with such strong and relevant knowledge, experience, and expertise that supports Avista's continued success. Thank you for your time this morning, and thank you for your dedication, insights, and commitment to Avista. Our board members are Julie Bentz, Don Burke, Kevin Jacobson, Becky Klein, Senna Kowaloo, Scott Ma, Scott Morris, Jeff Phillips, Heidi Stanley, and Janet Widman. Now for our officers. You'll note the various areas for which the officers are responsible appeared in the annual report, so I'll introduce them by name only. Our officers are Alexis Alexander, Kevin Christie, Brian Cox, Josh DeLuciano, Greg Hessler, Leticia Hill, Scott Kinney, Ryan Krauselt, Wayne Manuel, Jason Thaxton, and Alec Mesdeg. As I reflect on my first year as CEO, I want to begin by thanking our shareholders for your continued confidence in Avista. This past year was marked by meaningful opportunities for growth and investment. Avista navigated operational and financial challenges in 2025 while continuing to make progress on priorities that support the long-term strength of the company. We remain committed to delivering safe, reliable energy to our customers, while positioning the company to meet evolving demand and policy expectations. As we look ahead, it remains our strategy to invest thoughtfully to strengthen our system, advance clean and resilient energy solutions, support affordability for customers, and create long-term value for our shareholders. Avista remains invested in progress and grounded in resilience. At this time, we'll convene the business portion of the meeting. The Inspector of Elections has informed us a majority of outstanding shares held of record and entitled to vote as of the close of business on March 13, 2026, the record date of this meeting, are represented at this meeting. The first matter to be considered at this meeting is the election of directors. Eleven directors are standing for election for a one-year term. The board recommends a vote for each director. There are no other nominations. The second matter to be considered at this meeting is the proposal by the board of directors that the shareholders ratify the board's appointment of the firm of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm for 2026. The Board recommends a vote for this proposal. I'd like to note that representatives from Deloitte & Touche are attending this virtual meeting. The third matter to be considered is an advisory non-binding vote on the company's executive compensation. The Board recommends a vote for this proposal. The fourth matter to be considered is a proposal to amend the company's restated articles and incorporation to reduce the shareholder approval requirement for specified matters from 80% of the total number of shares of common stock outstanding to a majority of such shares outstanding. The board recommends a vote for this proposal. As you know, most of our shareholders voted before this meeting. The preliminary voting results, as of this morning, show that Proposals 1, 2, and 3 have passed, and that Proposal 4 had not received approval of 80% of outstanding shares that it needs to pass. And that concludes the business portion of our meeting. So, at this point, I'd like to open it up for questions. And as a reminder, if you have a question, please enter it into the text box at the lower left corner of the screen of this meeting site.

Our first question, Heather said, what excites you as you look from 2026 into 27 as the CEO of Avista?

Yeah, I love that question, of course, and I've had the opportunity to go around in the last year and talk to most of our employees across the company. And at those meetings, it was demonstrated significantly that our people are so skilled, knowledgeable, and excited for the future. And so I feel very fortunate to have such an amazing team to guide us into the opportunities and challenges that are coming at us. And of course, there's a lot of technology changes that are happening around us, AI specifically being one that is going to be transformational. And there's a lot of opportunities that come with that. And we're already experiencing and taking advantage and seeing those. But we also know that there's risk that comes with that. And so we have an offense and defense in terms of strategy taking advantage of and managing risk related to the advances of AI. But other technology is also advancing related to drone technology and automation that we're able to take advantage of and serve our customers even better with that technology. And then finally, I think we're advancing our relationship with our customers and our communities and even connecting with them in more powerful and meaningful ways to be able to serve them better. So there's a lot to be excited for.

Great.

Our next question is a bit of a two-part question. Do you see opportunity in data centers, and do regulations create a headwind in this area? Related, are there federal or state regulations that are creating tailwinds or headwinds for the company in general?

Yeah, I'll start with the data centers. And we've shared that we have seen an increase in inbound requests related to data centers and other large loads. As of this point, our queue, our inbound queue is about 1.1 gigawatts of requests. And we do have one data center developer of about 500 megawatts that we're in negotiations with right now. I believe we have seen policy in other jurisdictions related to data centers and potentially limiting the data center development. And so as we do talk with our developers, that, of course, is something that they're watching is any uncertainty that could be created. And so we're helping to make sure they're having the right conversations with our policymakers and local and state officials to help minimize that uncertainty for them. And related to just regulation in general and the tailwinds or headwinds that we're seeing, we are fortunate related to some of the federal grant funding that has been available that we've submitted for several of those grants and have received them. And so that's always nice to have that kind of support offsetting costs for our customers here locally. And then related to our regulatory environment, we have seen a constructive regulatory direction in Washington with the legislation that went through a couple years ago to support multi-year rate cases, and we've seen that work well in our last rate cases. And then in Oregon, there's current rulemaking happening that we are hopeful will have similar results in terms of being that productive regulatory direction. That's great.

And one final question here. What would you consider the unicorn features of Avista?

Yeah, having been here for this summer will be almost 30 years and a couple months. Of course, I feel like we have a lot of unicorn features, and having grown up here in Spokane, I do think that having a lot of our leaders and employees who have very deep connections to our community and in our service territory, that those relationships that we have and that understanding of the jurisdictions that we have, I think it's a strong benefit for us. I also think that we're, I say this a lot, we're geographically blessed just in terms of our location being in between where a lot of the large loads are on the west side of the state and where a lot of the new generation is coming at in more of the Midwest. And so I think we have continued opportunity for transmission investment to support that transfer of energy. And based on our size, I think that being smaller has its advantages in terms of being more nimble. Again, I think that allows us to be even closer to our communities and be able to manage the risks on behalf of our communities even better. And there's also advantages being, you know, we're a summer and winter peaking utility. I think there's advantages with that and how we utilize our infrastructure. And being gas and electric also has its advantages in creating flexibility as well. So I think, again, a lot to point at in terms of our unique features. That's great.

We have no further questions in the queue.

All right. Well, if there are no further questions, I'd like to close by saying thank you for attending today's annual meeting, and we send you all our best wishes and have a good day.

The meeting has now concluded. You may now disconnect.