Earnings Call Transcript - ELC Q1 2025

Operator, Operator

Good morning. My name is Greg, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Entergy Corporation First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I will now turn the call over to Liz Hunter, Vice President of Investor Relations for Entergy Corporation. Liz, you have the floor.

Liz Hunter, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, Greg, and thanks to everyone for joining this morning. We will begin today with comments from Entergy's Chair and CEO, Drew Marsh; and then Kimberly Fontan, our CFO, will review results. In an effort to accommodate everyone who has questions, we request that each person ask no more than two questions. In today's call, management will make certain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, which are set forth in our earnings release, our slide presentation and our SEC filings. Entergy does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Management will also discuss non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation, both of which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. And now I will turn the call over to Drew.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Thank you, Liz. Good morning, everyone. We had a very productive start to the year with progress on activities that support our near- and long-term objectives. Important updates to facilitate customer growth include new customer announcements, regulatory outcomes, and new legislation. Starting with our financial results for the first quarter, today we are reporting adjusted earnings per share of $0.82. We're on track for 2025 guidance, and we remain well positioned to attain our greater than 8% adjusted earnings per share compound annual growth rate for the outlook period. Kimberly will discuss our financial results in more detail. As you've heard us say, we aim to create value for all our stakeholders: customers, employees, communities, and owners. Customers are listed first because everything starts there. The opportunities driving our industrial sales growth continue to be robust. There is increasing visibility into our growth including three announcements from large customers since our last call. In March, Hyundai Motor Group announced a $5.8 billion investment in Hyundai Steel, a manufacturing facility that will serve as an engine for economic growth in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. Then in early April, CF Industries announced that it reached its final investment decision on its $4 billion investment in a low-carbon blue ammonia facility, which will be located near Hyundai Steel. This project was first announced in 2022. And yesterday, Woodside announced that they have reached FID on their $17.5 billion LNG facility, bringing jobs and investment to Coastal Louisiana. These projects are expected to come online in 2028 and into 2029 and were assumed in our outlook last quarter. These customers diversify our industrial mix. They also provide important benefits to the nearby communities through substantial local investments, significant growth, and workforce development. We've demonstrated a long history of powering industrial growth as businesses establish and expand operations in the Gulf South region. Hyundai Steel, CF Industries, and Woodside LNG are examples of this trend continuing. As more companies consider investment in the U.S., the Gulf South remains a very attractive option with low power costs, robust energy and transportation infrastructure, access to diverse energy sources, a business-friendly environment, a proven workforce, and welcoming communities. Data centers are a more recent addition to our large customer portfolio, and we remain in productive discussions for many potential projects. We continue to receive strong interest and optimism from hyperscale developers about the incredible opportunity before them. Our data center pipeline remains in the 5 to 10 gigawatts range. We are executing on our capital plan to support that strong customer growth as well as improved reliability and resilience. We continue to make progress in the Orange County Advanced Power Station. The project is approximately 70% complete with more than 1 million man-hours worked with no safety incidents. The project remains on schedule and on budget with a projected in-service date by summer of next year. Delta Blues advanced power station in Mississippi is in an earlier phase of construction and is also on schedule and on budget. At the same time, we're exploring the potential to increase the capacity of our existing combined cycle natural gas facilities nearly 500 megawatts. For nuclear, we completed the spring refueling outage at River Bend on schedule. During the outage, we conducted extensive work on the main generator to support long-term reliable operations. The Waterford 3 refueling outage is now underway. Planned work includes replacement of low-pressure turbine rotors that will improve efficiency and pave the way to increase the capacity of the plant by an estimated 40 megawatts in the fall of 2026. We continue to assess potential capacity upgrades at our other nuclear plants that could total approximately 275 megawatts. As we mentioned before, we have an NRC early site permit for a potential new nuclear facility at Grand Gulf, which expires in April 2027. We intend to renew the permit for another 20 years to maintain a viable option for new nuclear. We are in discussions with customers, potential partners, and other stakeholders regarding that opportunity. As you can see, our operations and project management development teams are doing a great job keeping us on track to support our customers' needs. In addition to our efforts in operations, we are working with our regulators and other stakeholders on important dockets that address infrastructure needs to support growth, reliability, and resilience. Efficient review processes are critical to stay on track to meet our customers' expectations. Entergy Louisiana received approval from its Public Service Commission to place the capital investment from Hurricane Francine into rate, subject to a future prudence review. This means our recovery started less than 2 months from filing and 6 months after the storm. A faster recovery reduces carrying costs and supports Entergy Louisiana's credit, both of which keep costs low for customers. The LPSC also approved a $0.5 billion West Bank 230 kV transmission project that will support customer growth and economic development. In addition, we have a major 500 kV transmission project in Louisiana that is pending commission review. Separately, we received the final approval needed for Entergy Louisiana's gas local distribution company sale from the East Baton Rouge Parish Council. We're targeting to close the sale of both Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans gas businesses in July. Introduce Louisiana's filings to support its hyperscale data center customer continues to move forward; parties have filed testimony, and the hearing is scheduled for mid-July. We remain on track for an LPSC decision in October. For Entergy Louisiana's 3 gigawatt solar RFP, the first round of procurement is complete, and we're moving forward with two proposals for owned assets that total 400 megawatts. Proposals in the second quarter were received in mid-April, and we are targeting selections later this quarter. In Texas, the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved placing $137 million of transmission investments into rates. We have also requested a certificate of convenience and necessity for a large transmission project in Texas known as SETEX, S-E-T-E-X. The hearing is scheduled for May, and we are targeting a commission decision by the end of August. Entergy Texas' request for generation CCNs is continuing as expected. Hearings for Legend and Lone Star dispatchable generation projects as well as renewable resources are complete. Briefings have begun, and no parties have disputed the need for new generation to meet growing demand. We are targeting decisions in the third quarter. In Arkansas, the Arkansas Public Service Commission issued a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need for Lake Catherine Unit 5. This plant is important to support Arkansas' customer demand. Entergy Mississippi received approval to build a combined cycle gas plant in Ridgeland County. This facility will serve the growing demand in our Mississippi service area. And Entergy Mississippi also filed its annual formula rate plan with no rate change requested. We expect the commission to take this up over the next few months. Turning to legislative matters. Arkansas recently completed its session, setting the stage for future growth in the state. Act 373, signed into law by the governor, supports economic development and growth and will benefit our customers and communities. Specifically, the legislation allows recovery for new generation capacity and certain transmission investments outside of the formula rate plans 4% cap. It also streamlines and simplifies the process for certification of public need to allow for faster response to economic development while maintaining regulatory oversight. Additionally, the new law allows utilities to recover carrying costs on construction work in process during construction, thus lowering costs for customers. Texas is also in a legislative session. One of the bills of interest for us will accelerate the regulatory review and approval for storm securitization to 150 days, significantly faster than previous reviews. More timely reviews benefit customers through lower carrying costs and improved credit. The Texas legislative session continues through June 2. Turning to tariffs. We know tariffs are certainly a topic that we know you're interested in. It's top of mind for us as well, and we are actively engaged in monitoring as the landscape evolves. There are several considerations, and the bottom line is that we believe tariffs impacts are manageable. The current tariffs would primarily impact capital expenditures, and we estimate that the impact to be approximately 1% of our $37 billion 4-year capital plan. The vast majority of the dollar impact is in the back end of our forecast period, which provides time to continue to reduce those effects through additional supply sources. To mitigate potential impacts, we are working with our suppliers to develop alternative supply sourcing strategies. In addition, our ongoing cost management efforts as well as contingencies in our spending plans will help us manage our costs. For example, at Analyst Day last summer, we talked about our disciplined capital prioritization and review processes to drive customer value. To date, we've identified greater than $1 billion of capital that was redeployed into other projects to benefit customers. We're making every effort to reduce the effects of tariffs for our customers, who are working hard to make ends meet and competing in a global marketplace. To that point, we're also actively monitoring what this means for our customers' businesses. Our large industrial customers are highly competitive in domestic and global markets. Commodity spreads continue to be supportive, in part due to the structural advantage of low-cost natural gas. I'd like to highlight a few specific examples. LNG exports are likely to increase due to the natural gas advantage, which would help bridge the trade deficit. I just mentioned the Woodside announcement as a case in point. Ammonia has a strong competitive position due to low natural gas prices in the U.S., and companies are moving forward in investment in clean energy technologies, as the CF Industries example illustrates. The petrochemical sector also enjoys structural advantages from low-cost natural gas liquid feedstocks, and potential decreases in global production would likely come from the European Union. Beyond the price advantage of natural gas, companies seeking domestically produced materials to manage tariffs could cause sectors such as steel that are not currently running at full capacity to ramp up production. Overall, commodity fundamentals still favor U.S. manufacturing. As a result, our service area remains well positioned to capture new onshoring and industrial development with the Gulf Coast advantage that we've talked about for some time. As I said, we believe tariff impacts are manageable, and with everything we know today, we remain confident in the guidance and outlook initiated on last quarter's call. Before I wrap up, tomorrow, our COO, Pete Norgeot, is retiring. Over his 10-plus years at Entergy, Pete transformed our power generation team and closed out our exit from the merchant power business. In the last couple of years as COO, he recentered us on public safety while preparing us to manage the large capital investments responding to customer demand. Pete is also a good friend. We will miss him, and we wish him well in the next chapter. Moving into the COO role is Kimberly Cook-Nelson, who has been driving our nuclear operations improvement over the last few years. She is a leader in the nuclear industry who brings a wealth of leadership experience, operational discipline, and project management skills to the COO role, which will serve us well for the growth investment road ahead. Finally, John Dinelli is taking over as Chief Nuclear Officer. He is a long-time Entergy employee who started here when we purchased Indian Point. He has held many leadership roles within the nuclear organization and recently served as our Nuclear COO, helping lead the cultural changes needed to continue our relentless pursuit of improvement in nuclear operations. While we are sad to see Pete go, we're excited about the new opportunities that will come from the leadership of Kimberly and John. Finally, we're starting to learn of the passing of Alexis Herman over the weekend. From her beginnings in Alabama along the Gulf Coast, she attended Xavier University right here in New Orleans and then went on to become Secretary of Labor, among many other accomplishments. Of course, we know her from her 20 years of service on our Board of Directors. Beyond her outstanding wisdom and insight, she was a friend, a mentor, and an inspiration to all of us, and we will miss her dearly. Although we are sad, Alexis would be proud of our great start to the year. We are on the path to meet our stakeholders' expectations in 2025 with solid progress across key customer operational, legislative, and regulatory fronts. We are executing on our plan to realize the opportunity in front of us, and we're confident we can be successful. As we continue to put our customers first, we will deliver premium value to each of our key stakeholders. I'll now turn the call over to Kimberly.

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Thank you, Drew. Good morning, everyone. Today, I will review our financial results as well as our guidance and outlook. I'll also talk about tax credits and their potential financial impacts. Starting with earnings. Our adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.82. This result keeps us firmly on track for our adjusted EPS guidance for the year. The quarter's adjusted EPS drivers are shown on Slide 4. Key highlights include higher retail sales volume, including the effects of weather, effects from regulatory actions, including recovery of investments to benefit customers, and lower other O&M than first quarter last year. These favorable effects were partially offset by higher interest expense and depreciation as a result of investments. First quarter weather-adjusted retail sales growth was strong at 5.2%; the industrial sales increase was the biggest driver at 9.3%, reflecting increases in usage from customer additions over the course of 2024 as well as continued ramp-up of new and expansion customers. Slide 5 provides our credit ratings and affirms that our credit metric outlooks remain better than agency thresholds. Our ongoing focus on credit has created flexibility to manage volatility and headwinds. Availability and transferability of renewable tax credits continue to be a topic of interest. Nuclear production tax credits or PTCs become effective in 2024. The Treasury Department has not issued guidance on how to determine gross receipts for purposes of calculating the amount of nuclear PTCs generated. We are evaluating our position with respect to these credits and will finalize our position prior to our 2024 corporate tax filings. As a reminder, cash benefits from nuclear PTCs are not included in our outlook. So any nuclear PTCs that are realized would be a positive to our plan. Our 2027 and 2028 outlooks include tax credits of approximately $170 million and $350 million, respectively, on more than $5 billion of renewable investments through 2028. If the transferability rules change, we would expect to monetize the credits using tax equity. We continue to safe harbor as many projects as possible in the event that the credit phases out sooner than the current rules provide. However, even if we were to lose all the renewable tax credits assumed in our guidance, our credit metrics would still exceed rating agency thresholds. Turning to Slide 6. Our equity needs are unchanged since our last update. During the quarter, we executed an approximately $1.5 billion block equity forward, including the Green Shield. Prior to the equity block, we contracted roughly $230 million using ATM forwards. With these transactions, we have successfully secured our equity needs into 2027, and we've contracted approximately two-thirds of our needs through 2028, ensuring access to capital needed to execute on our capital plan. No forwards were settled during the quarter. As shown on Slide 7, we are affirming our adjusted EPS guidance and outlooks. For 2025, we're firmly on track. Weather and other updates in the first quarter create flexibility to manage the business in response to potential volatility and other headwinds. Looking ahead to the second quarter, we expect other O&M to be roughly $0.05 higher than last year, primarily due to planned power generation spending, including the timing of outages and timing of vegetation management expenses. We have confidence in our plan and our ability to deliver on our guidance and outlooks. We had a strong start to the year and have a solid plan to support our growing customer base. We are excited about the opportunities before us and remain well positioned to execute and deliver successful outcomes. And now the Entergy team is available for questions.

Operator, Operator

And it looks like our first question today comes from Shar Pourreza with Guggenheim Partners.

Konstantin Lednev, Analyst

Congrats on a great quarter. It's actually Constantine here for Shar. Just as we're thinking about the Arkansas generation build, do you feel the state is now fully competitive on the data center front in terms of providing turnkey interconnection? Have there been any inbound thus far? Or do you need any further rate design improvement?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Sorry, Constantine, this is Drew. We believe they are now fully competitive. We are currently engaging with potential customers in Arkansas and have generated significant interest there. We are actively pursuing opportunities in that area.

Konstantin Lednev, Analyst

Excellent. And then maybe in terms of the financing updates, just last quarter, the guidance was for 75% of the equity to be after 2026, and it looks like that might be accelerating slightly. Does that imply an acceleration of credit metric improvement or any other moving pieces you want to highlight?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes, there hasn't been a substantial change in the timing of the equity needed. We contracted forward into '27. But our credit metrics through '28 continue to build towards and up to 15%. So we see strong flexibility in credit, but I wouldn't assume a whole lot of shift in the equity needs and the timing of the equity in that period.

Konstantin Lednev, Analyst

And anything that drove such a big forward volume in 1Q relative to last quarter? Or is that just kind of optimization?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes, it really was taking risk off the table. We had an opportunity to execute on that forward. And given volatility and the equity that we needed that we believed we could continue to satisfy with the ATM, but we had an opportunity to close some of that out, so we took advantage of that. And set ourselves up to be able to manage volatility over the next couple of years.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.

Jeremy Tonet, Analyst

Just wanted to look at the sales a little bit here. I think that your residential customer count might have been up just under 1% quarter-over-quarter. And your weather-normalized sales, if I'm seeing this right, residential went up about 4.5%. Just wondering if you could talk a bit more about drivers there?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Jeremy, it's Kimberly. I wouldn't look too much at the specifics on the quarter-over-quarter, you're going to see some volatility in the accounts. But we expect our residential sales to be about 1% for the full year, I mean our sales overall to be about 5.5%. So still strong sales over the year, but you're going to see some volatility in a given quarter on a quarter-over-quarter basis.

Jeremy Tonet, Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And just moving to industrial sales. And as you said, it will be volatile in any given quarter, but it seems like there's a degree of macro uncertainty out there that might be weighing on industrial activity a bit. Just wondering if you could provide any thoughts from your viewpoint on your service territory?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes. When we think about our industrial customers, we have had more than 5% growth for over 15 years, and that's included a number of periods where various economic factors were happening. I think the three industrial customers that Drew referenced in his comments coming in just this quarter over the last couple of months underscore the opportunity that we have for our traditional customers, and we continue to have significant opportunity in the data center space. Our customers are making 30-year decisions. There's short-term volatility that they may have to manage through, but we see those decisions coming through, and we continue to see a lot of opportunity through our pipeline as we go forward.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

And I'll just point to the rule of thumb that we have in our materials for industrial sales is a 1% change in a given year; it's only about $0.01 of impact. So it's pretty well derisked because of the high level of demand charges that we have in the industrial customer space.

Jeremy Tonet, Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And just one last one, if I could. Just as far as these winning new packages here and increasing the pipeline of big activity. I wonder if you could provide more color on what it looks like, I guess, on conversations with data centers or other large industrial users, how you see that, I guess, coming together in this environment? Has anything changed?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes, Jeremy, that Drew referenced we had 5 to 10 gigawatts in our data center discussions. Those are still strong and ongoing discussions. Our pipeline in our other customers hasn't really changed from the last time that we gave that level of detail. We continue to have strong conversations. Our pipeline is on a weighted probability basis. Drew referenced that these customers were in our forecast. But certainly, they are hitting at a faster and higher success rate that enables us to continue to serve them, but if that rate continues, we'll have to look at incremental capital to support continued growth.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Yes, that's a good point. The three announcements that we gave you were in our forecast, but they were probability-weighted. Now the sales expectation for them are much higher than what we were originally anticipating, and they are taking up space that the other probability-weighted customers might have been taking up. So there could be additional capital needed should those customers come in, and we do expect some of them to.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of David Arcaro with Morgan Stanley.

David Arcaro, Analyst

I would like an update on your system regarding the large load customers in the pipeline. How quickly can you connect them to service? Time to power has been a key focus for this group, so I'm interested in the latest information on your ability to accommodate new large load customers.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Yes. This is Drew, and then I'll see if Kimberly wants to add anything. We do have positions in queues in order to provide generation to potential customers. As you all know, those queues are full. But our positions, we believe, would allow us to continue to offer up opportunities for customers. At this point, it's near the back end of our period because there's just a lot to do to make room for all this. And as you know, the three customers that we were talking about today are all in the 2028, moving into the 2029 kind of timeframe. So that's kind of where we are in terms of potential opportunity. And so it doesn't really matter which kind of customers we're talking about; that's where that opportunity will be sitting.

David Arcaro, Analyst

Got it. Yes, that makes sense. I would like a quick clarification on the tariff exposure. Would you consider the tariff exposure as being tied to earnings? Are these already approved projects that will now incur higher costs, or are they future projects that will go through regulatory processes over time? I know you're attempting to offset this, but how do you view the earnings exposure, if any, from that?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes, David. Most of that exposure, as you noted, is in '27 and '28. And most of it is also tied to new generation, specific components to build those facilities. We think that gives us time to find additional suppliers and mitigate that. So we don't see that being a real earnings effect. Drew mentioned some of the things we're doing to mitigate that, but we think that that is manageable within the forecast period.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Nick Campanella with Barclays.

Nicholas Campanella, Analyst

Thanks for all the updates. I just want to ask on '25. It just seems like you're off to a good start. Are you trending higher in the fiscal '25 plan just given the weather tailwinds or other headwinds to kind of consider for later this year?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes, we did have a good start to the year, but as with any year, we use that to manage through the course of the business uncertainty. We obviously have the summer coming; we could have a super-hot summer, or we could have a mild summer, so we need to see how that plays out. But we'll use that flexibility to help us manage, but we're comfortable that we'll deliver our outlook at the end of the year.

Nicholas Campanella, Analyst

Okay. Great. And then just on this new customer generation and transmission filing, I know that we're approaching hearings here as kind of a midterm data point. Just is there any potential for effort by the parties to want to settle issues in the proceeding? Or do you kind of see that going straight through into the October order?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Yes. This is Drew. Yes, there is always the potential to settle. And so we will look at that if those opportunities arise. Certainly, we'd always prefer to settle rather than go to hearing if we could. But we have a good schedule, and there's a lot of support for this investment in the state and among the stakeholders. So we're confident that we will manage through the process and get the outcome that will benefit the customers and communities.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Paul Fremont with Ladenburg.

Paul Fremont, Analyst

Congratulations on a strong quarter. I guess my first question is, can you give us a sense of the load that's associated with the three customers?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Paul, unfortunately, I can't. We don't have authorization to talk about specific customer load. So I wouldn't mention that to you. I would say these are large industrial facilities, and they would be on par with things that you might see elsewhere. But I can't give you specifics, unfortunately.

Paul Fremont, Analyst

And then that your transmission filing in Texas, is that 365, 500, or 345 kV line that you're proposing? And I guess how many miles should we think of additional transmission?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Yes. That's 500 kV, and it is 130 to 160 miles. There's a slide in the materials that you can look at. It actually will sort of terminate ideally with the line that we are requesting for approval in Louisiana. So you'll get customer support and a good resilience benefit out of that as well to help us with storms.

Paul Fremont, Analyst

What would be the completion date if you were awarded the project?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

We think it would be just outside of our outlook period in 2029.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research.

Steven Fleishman, Analyst

On the sales guide for 2025, you lowered it slightly. Could you provide any explanation for that?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Steve, it really is just as we get line of sight on the course of the year, we know the industrials will come in. Their ramps may vary, and large load comes in a little bit of variety over the course of the year. So still at 5.5%, we see strong sales, but just a little bit of clarity on how that's going to come in.

Steven Fleishman, Analyst

Okay. And then last quarter, I think you had the second Mississippi customer that you kind of announced but hadn't been named. Is there any more clarity on that customer?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Yes. So we are still moving forward with that customer. They have not announced themselves. So we are working to their schedule, but there's nothing new from our end. We are moving forward on everything we needed to do to serve that customer.

Steven Fleishman, Analyst

Okay. Then on the regulatory on the Texas plants that you're looking to build, I think staff came out against it more because they thought you should have had an RFP. Just could you talk to your views on being able to resolve that constructively.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Sure. As I mentioned in my remarks, there is no disagreement with the need for incremental generation in Texas. Everybody recognizes that. I think everybody also appreciates that we really need to move quickly in order to support the load growth in Texas as well. That's fully in the record and well supported the rationale for why we needed to move quickly. We've already got the Orange County plant. We actually did a full RFP for that one, and there were no other competing bids. For this project, in lieu of a longer time required for a full RFP, we did bid out some of the major components for the plant. So there is RFP in there, just not for the whole thing, and that's all reflected in the record, and we understand what the staff was saying, but we do believe there's support for us to continue to move forward and get to the finish line. Of course, we have to finish out the process with the commission, and the commission needs to agree with that. But we believe that there's evidence in the record that will support moving forward quickly.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Sophie Karp with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Sophie Karp, Analyst

I have a couple of questions regarding the generation portfolio and your perspective on it. I'm interested in your views on what market signals would prompt you to take a closer look at nuclear and potentially advance those opportunities. Additionally, some of your competitors are noting that constructing gas plants can take a significant amount of time. What is your experience in this area, and how quickly can you currently build a gas plant?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Yes. With regards to nuclear, we are working on opportunities right now, as I mentioned. We have the early site permit in Mississippi that is an opportunity for us. We're talking with stakeholders, including customers and vendors on that. I don't know that there are any other market signals that we could see. The key issue for us is our ability to manage the construction risk. And of course, we need a customer to want to pay for that. So there's a lot of political support in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and in Texas. Some of the states have laws in their legislative sessions right now that they are considering to try and facilitate nuclear investments. We view that as very positive, but we need to be able to solve that commercial question upfront in order to move forward with nuclear on a more rapid pace. Regarding combined cycles and the path there, the key for that is where you are in the queue. We have queue positions that would allow us to build plants in '28 and '29. You saw that the examples today and the customers that are coming in are coming in, in that timeframe that matches up with our ability to continue to build. So that's the timeframe we are looking at right now is bringing on combined cycles. If you have queue positions, that's consistent with most. I think there may be a few people that have uncommitted queue positions maybe in 2027. But that's about as early as I think you can get today that we've seen that could come into our service area. If you're not in the queue and you're trying to get into the queue today, it's probably more like 2030, 2031. So it's a little further out.

Sophie Karp, Analyst

And then my other question is on the legislation that you mentioned in Arkansas and in Texas, I believe that improves recovery mechanisms for a plant under construction and storm recovery. How should we think about potential financial impacts of those? Obviously, this is a positive, but how much would that be, I guess, accretive on a normal year to you guys?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Sophie, it's Kimberly. From the Arkansas legislation, it does allow us to build earlier because you get recovery earlier through cash CWIP rather than AFUDC. We haven't quantified that effect. We'll look at what specific investments will use that mechanism and how that will benefit customers. That will be communicated in future quarters, but certainly sets us up to move faster and actually provides lower cost to customers because of the CWIP recovery early in the construction period. In Texas, I think the mechanisms are more around ensuring risk. There's wildfire legislation and other legislation there, but I don't know that you'll see a lot of changes in the financials from depending on what goes through the legislative session there. From a securitization perspective, it is timing of the ability to recover the cost, which does lower costs to customers because of the carrying cost on that time to get those dollars back.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Ryan Levine with Citi.

Ryan Levine, Analyst

I have two related questions, particularly to Louisiana. How does the Woodside FID decision impact the availability of power time to market for new potential data center customers in your service territory? And then related, given the macro uncertainty, any color you can share around GDP sensitivity to your load or customer activity in your plan and how that could impact the large load customer conversations?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Ryan, I'll address the first part of your question regarding the data center and how the large customers affect that. We've talked before that our large traditional customers are in a probability-weighted pipeline in our forecast. The large data centers are considered binary. We look at what it takes to supply those and then also add that as needed when we add that large customer. Those are not mutually exclusive, but also not as dependent on each other. We think that we can continue to serve data centers over time. Obviously, Drew talked about the timing on construction, but we think we still have a lot of opportunity there.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

I want to ensure I understand your second question correctly, Ryan. You are asking about the macro drivers and how they might impact Woodside specifically.

Ryan Levine, Analyst

Those factors could influence discussions about data centers, particularly if the economy slows, which may lead to a decrease in load and an expansion of your reserve margins.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Yes, data centers are similar to our traditional industrial customers in that they are focused on long-term investments. They are looking beyond any immediate macroeconomic effects like tariffs or a recession. This is reflected in our discussions with them, as they are considering the future rather than just short-term gains. They are making various investments, with their primary motivation being long-term expectations rather than immediate macro influences.

Ryan Levine, Analyst

But in terms of your core business outside of those customers, how GDP sensitive is your load?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

It is not recession-proof, if that's what you're asking. However, we have some of the most competitive industrials in the world, thanks to the investments made over the last 15 years in our service territory. In the event of any macro changes, they would be the last to shut down and the first to ramp up again. Currently, commodity spreads from the U.S. to global markets remain favorable, especially for the Gulf Coast. We may experience some temporary downturn, but those currently operating would likely resume operations quickly if they had to scale back. Our sensitivity from an earnings perspective is quite low; a $0.01 change for any 1% shift in industrial sales shows how minimal the sensitivity is and highlights the importance of the demand charges we have. I believe our industrial customers will remain strong through any downturn. From an investment standpoint, as mentioned, data centers and large industrials are considering investments that span many decades rather than just the current macro conditions.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from Anthony Crowdell with Mizuho.

Anthony Crowdell, Analyst

Just a couple of quick questions on transferability. I appreciate you gave us some numbers, but what's the impact to your FFO to debt metric if transferability were to sunset?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes, it's Kimberly. The numbers I gave you, as I noted, we didn't provide a percentage on FFO, but we would be well above our or we would be above our threshold, I should say. We also would look to maintain some of that through other mechanisms like I talked about, safe harboring, potentially or also tax equity partnerships. That is sort of a bookend case, but we would expect to be able to manage that as well. But regardless, we still expect to be above our threshold.

Anthony Crowdell, Analyst

Great. And maybe it's more of a rating agency question. But if one of the options were tax equity, do you know if the treatment of that is sum of the transferability, or is that not included in the FFO calculation?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes. We've done a few of those already over the last few years, and they are treated in the normal course. So I wouldn't expect that to be any different.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Andrew Weisel with Scotiabank.

Andrew Weisel, Analyst

If I could first just elaborate on the slight reduction to the load growth forecast. First, just to clarify, you're saying it's about the pace of new customers ramping, not about usage from existing customers. Is that right?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

Yes, I think that's a fair assumption.

Andrew Weisel, Analyst

Okay. Great. And then I recognize the EPS impact is modest, but can you detail you originally guided to 11% to 12% industrial growth in 2025? What's your new forecast to the industrial class?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

I don't think it's substantially changed. I think it will still be close to that range. Really, this is about timing, ramping, but not a significant change in where we are.

Andrew Weisel, Analyst

Okay. Very good. And then one more, if I may. I appreciate the easy-to-read list of the significant investment proposals on Slide 15, and it does add up to a lot of potential spending, mostly in Louisiana and Texas, across generation and transmission. My question is how much of that is already included in the CapEx plan? And is there sort of a risk adjustment for some or all of these projects? And would there be upside or downside to the plan pending regulatory approval?

Kimberly Fontan, CFO

It’s $37 billion through 2028. What you're seeing on Slide 15 as a list of investments, I would assume those are all included in the financial plan. Anything that's not in the financial plan would have to be looked at depending on additional customers and that sort of thing.

Operator, Operator

And our last question today comes from the line of Travis Miller with Morningstar.

Travis Miller, Analyst

Have you altered your strategic discussions regarding contracting with customers, particularly in terms of transitioning from shorter-term contracts to longer-term offtake agreements or fixed price contracts? I'm curious if there have been any changes in your approach.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

Not actually, not really. One of the advantages that we have is we've been serving large industrial customers for a while, and we were able to take advantage of those structures and frameworks that we had been contracting with previously, which included credit provisions, fixed demand charges, what we call minimum bill charges, and other termination features and things like that. We’ve had to be disciplined with the way that we approach this so that we can make sure that we keep all of our existing customers in a good spot while we get these new customers up and running.

Travis Miller, Analyst

Sure. That makes sense. And then a specific one on the Louisiana new customer. Finally, is there a precedent either in Louisiana or other states you serve or other states you've researched for a decision like this? Is there any kind of precedent ruling you've seen?

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

I'm sorry, I missed the first part, a precedent ruling on transmission investment in Louisiana.

Travis Miller, Analyst

No, the new customer investment.

Drew Marsh, Chair and CEO

The new customer. Yes, okay. Well, I mean, I think the components themselves, nothing is new that’s in there. It’s standard generation and transmission investments that have been requested before. There is a specific customer that we are aiming to serve in this docket. But outside of that, I think that actually helps because it helps illustrate how we will manage the overall impact to existing customer bills. And so I think that probably helps the conversation. But the investments themselves are nothing new for the commission to consider.

Operator, Operator

And that does conclude our Q&A session today. Thank you so much, everyone. I will now turn the call back to Liz Hunter for closing comments. Liz?

Liz Hunter, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, Greg, and thanks to everyone for participating this morning. Our quarterly report on Form 10-Q is due to the SEC on May 12. It provides more details and disclosures about our financial statements. Events that occur prior to the date of our 10-Q filing that provide additional evidence of conditions that existed at the date of the balance sheet would be reflected in our financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Also, as a reminder, we maintain a web page as part of Entergy's Investor Relations website called Regulatory and Other Information, which provides key updates on regulatory proceedings and important milestones on our strategic execution. While some of this information may be considered material information, you should not rely exclusively on this page for all relevant company information. And this concludes our call. Thank you very much.