I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Entergy's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Liz Hunter, Vice President of Investor Relations for Entergy Corporation. Liz, the floor is yours.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. 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.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning everyone. We've had a very productive quarter, and we're excited to give you an update this morning. We're reporting strong financial and business results that include important progress on our growth strategy, with a significant new capital investment plan to support customer requirements. I'll start with earnings. Today, we are reporting strong quarterly adjusted EPS of $2.99. With our results to-date and three quarters behind us, we are raising the bottom of the guidance range by $0.10. We're also raising our longer-term outlook, driven by the new capital investment to support higher industrial sales and growing interest in clean energy products. Our industrial sales growth story continues to be robust. With developments since Analyst Day, we now see an industrial sales compound annual growth rate of 11% to 12% through 2028, 300 basis points higher. The change is primarily due to a large new customer in Louisiana, with whom we have executed an electric service agreement. We don't disclose specific customer details without their consent, so we can't provide additional information at this time. In addition, many large industrial customers are looking to our operating companies for clean energy products to support their decarbonization goals. We are seeing strong customer interest in renewable green tariffs and nuclear clean tariffs. We're also working with stakeholders in a broader array of clean offerings, including technologies like CCS and advanced nuclear. Collectively, this means that our preliminary capital plan through 2028 is $7 billion higher than at Analyst Day, driven by new transmission as well as incremental generation investments, including renewables. We will have more details at EEI. There are several areas where we've already made progress to support growth. For example, we continue to add renewables to our system. Entergy Arkansas' Walnut Bend Solar, a 100-megawatt project that was a build-owned transfer partnership with Invenergy, is now in service. Entergy Arkansas also closed on the 180-megawatt West Memphis Solar and 250-megawatt Driver Solar projects. We now have close to 800 megawatts of sold resources in service and more than 2,600 megawatts of specific projects that are in process, approved, or under regulatory review. Beyond this, we continue to plan for more customer-driven renewable projects, including through a recently issued RFP aimed at Entergy Louisiana's new streamlined approval process. Since Analyst Day, we've announced four very large, efficient large-scale dispatchable generation projects, three today in Louisiana, and one several weeks ago in Mississippi. The 750-megawatt dual fuel combined cycle combustion turbine units will be hydrogen-ready and enable future carbon capture and storage. To support successful execution, each of these plants is expected to use a standardized design. We have a proven track record of successfully executing large projects. Using strong, disciplined, and standardized processes, we have successfully built five major generation projects over the last decade, with a sixth project, the Orange County Advanced Power Station in Texas, currently on track. This experience and expertise are especially important to support the tremendous growth on the horizon. Preparing for CCS is an important part of that conversation because the Clean Air Act Section 111B currently requires new gas-fired generation to have CCS in place by 2032. Additionally, we are in active discussions with customers who are interested in a variety of low-carbon generation solutions, including CCS. As we previously discussed, Entergy Louisiana received a grant to complete a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study at the Lake Charles Power Station. We are also working with Crescent's Midstream to assess the technical and financial feasibility of executing carbon capture and storage at LCPS in a manner that ensures public safety and addresses the interests of our communities. Once completed, the learnings from this work will benefit future CCS projects. Ultimately, we believe that CCS is a critical technology to comply with eventual federal emissions requirements to help our customers meet their decarbonization objectives and for us to achieve our 2050 net-zero movement safely and responsibly. Another critical clean and reliable energy source is nuclear. Beyond our sizable existing fleet and capabilities, we are well positioned to evaluate and ultimately pursue new nuclear options. We are actively exploring potential power upgrades at our existing facilities that could total as much as 300 megawatts. We have an early site permit that was issued by the NRC in 2007 for a potential new reactor at the Grand Gulf site. We have a memorandum of understanding with Holtec to evaluate its SMR technology for use in our service area. At the same time, we are participating in several industry working groups that are evaluating other SMR technologies and potential development opportunities. Furthermore, we are participating in state working groups in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi that are evaluating the potential for nuclear expansion in those states. Our work in this area supports ongoing customer conversations on options that could accelerate new nuclear investments. Each of these generation technologies, solar and storage, CCS, and new nuclear, as well as potentially wind, are important to achieve reliability, affordability, and sustainability outcomes for our customers. We see significant potential customer value from each, and we are well positioned to help capture that value for our customers. We are working with a broad set of stakeholders to understand, and we are confident we will address any safety, economic, social, or other concerns related to these technologies. As with all investments, we will be disciplined in evaluating the risk and economic impacts before meaningful capital is deployed. Yesterday, Entergy Louisiana submitted its request to the LPSC for approval of a set of transmission and generation investments that will support the new customer in Louisiana. In order to support the customer's desired timeline, we've requested a decision in September next year. We know that many of you are interested in seeing this filing. It will not be available on the LPSC's website until closer to the time it is published in their bulletin on November 8th. Therefore, we have posted the public version of the application to the Regulatory & Other page on our Investor Relations' website. The application provides an overview and summary of the filing. We plan to submit a separate filing to request approval for renewable projects to support the customer's clean energy goals. This new customer will bring substantial benefits to the state and local communities, as well as our existing customers and other key stakeholders. For example, this development will provide meaningful opportunities to grow our communities through jobs, new sources of tax revenue, and improved quality of life. It's bringing these benefits to a region of Louisiana that has been economically disadvantaged for decades. The project will also diversify Louisiana's economy while providing significant opportunities for future development in the state. Electric sales revenue and other contributions from this customer will cover an appropriate share of the cost to serve, including the marginal costs associated with investments needed to support this customer, as well as a portion of our current costs, including investments in resilience that are critical to Louisiana. With this approach and our ongoing focus on efficiencies, we expect to maintain competitive rates below the national average. The stakeholder engagement model that we laid out at Analyst Day was the foundation for bringing this customer to Entergy Louisiana. As an integrated utility, we can provide generation, transmission, and retail requirements together in one solution. Our deep stakeholder relationships and history can facilitate alignment among all parties: state and local government, communities, regulators, and the customer. Our solutions can leverage existing partnerships and regulatory mechanisms to accelerate timelines. The combination of these factors allows us and our stakeholders to successfully deliver speed-to-market, which is a critical consideration for these large projects. The four macro trends I discussed at Analyst Day—onshoring, clean energy, electrification, and technology—are in full force and driving strong growth in our service area. In addition to the growth already in our outlooks, we could see additional sales to large customers and associated capital investments within the outlook period. We're excited about our growth progress, and we look forward to talking to you about it at EEI. Moving beyond the growth update, I have a few more things that I want to cover. We talked about our storm preparedness both operationally and financially. We have developed and refined plans that are purposeful, repeatable, and sustainable, and we're seeing the benefits. This year, we've had two hurricanes in our service area. We talked about Beryl last quarter. Today, I will cover Francine, a Category 2 storm. To start, we are thankful that we had zero OSHA recordable injuries with more than 550,000 work hours. The headline is that we restored power to 90% of our customers within just three days, keeping customers and key stakeholders well-informed throughout the restoration. This outstanding outcome was due to a combination of previous resilience investments, detailed planning and preparation, methodical and safe execution, and robust stakeholder communications. I thank all our employees for their hard work and dedication to restore power safely and as quickly as possible, so workers could go home to their families and our customers could return to their everyday lives. Kimberly will cover the cost estimates in a moment. Our storm response efforts didn't stop with our customers. We also provided mutual assistance to our neighboring utilities for Hurricanes Helene and Milton to help restore power in those communities. I want to again thank our teams for the extra effort. I also want to thank the mutual assistance workers who supported our customer restoration after Francine and Beryl. Mutual assistance is unique to our industry, and it's a great example of how utilities work together for the greater good in the moments that matter. While the investments we make every day harden our system, the launch of our resilience program marks the start of a more comprehensive grid strengthening effort. After the Commission approved Entergy Louisiana's $1.9 billion accelerated resilience plan in April, we officially kicked off Phase 1 with the groundbreaking for the first project in the Lake Charles area, where we will be investing $107 million to upgrade 148 miles of power lines. Many more projects are getting underway, and we expect to reach our full ramp early next year. We're making progress on establishing our formal accelerated resilience programs in other jurisdictions as well. The New Orleans City Council approved $100 million of investments over the next two years. This is in addition to the New Orleans East project selected for a DOE Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) grant that the council approved earlier this year. We are excited to start on this phase of projects to bring the benefits of a more resilient system to our customers in New Orleans. We also reached a settlement on the first phase of Entergy Texas' resilience plan, which includes $335 million of investment, $200 million of which is contingent on a grant from the Texas Energy Fund. We expect the commission to take up the settlement by year-end. Additionally, two of our operating companies recently were selected for federal grants that will provide resilience benefits to our customers at a lower cost. Entergy Louisiana successfully partnered with three parishes to be selected for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grants that will provide $68 million in funding for projects. At nearly the same time, Entergy Texas received a $54 million GRIP award per project that will protect communities around Port Arthur, including a major port that has been previously impacted by extreme weather. Along the way, we completed several large projects this year across the system that improve our resilience and serve as proof points for our resilient efforts. The Avenue C project in New Orleans, which many of you toured at Analyst Day, is now completed. You may recall that it showcased several resilience-oriented distribution technologies. The Port Bolivar and Palms elevated substations in Texas were completed before Beryl and easily withstood the effects of that storm. Notably, Port Foshan and the coastal city of Grand Isle in Louisiana maintained access to power throughout Francine after resilience investments were made there following Hurricane Ida in 2021. The progress on resilience is further evidence that a customer-first approach remains key to achieving regulatory outcomes that benefit all stakeholders. This approach has also supported our progress on other regulatory engagements. During the past quarter, the Louisiana Public Service Commission unanimously approved several items that renewed Entergy Louisiana's formula rate plan for three years, resolved all claims against system energy, approved the sale of Louisiana's LDC business, and authorized the divestiture of Louisiana's share of Grand Gulf Energy and capacity to Mississippi. Relatedly, we have requested state commission and FERC approvals to divest Louisiana's share of Grand Gulf energy and capacity to Mississippi. We are targeting a January 1st effective date. New formula rate plans were effective in September for New Orleans following its normal process and for Louisiana following the Commission's approval for the three-year formula rate plan extension. These results are the foundation for customer growth that benefits all stakeholders, which we discussed earlier, and they have not happened by accident. They are the product of the ongoing shift in the way we approach our business by embedding customer centricity and stakeholder engagement into everything we do. We've had a very successful quarter. We made steady progress across key customer operational, regulatory, and finance fronts. We're raising the bottom of our 2024 adjusted EPS guidance range and increasing our longer-term outlook as a result of our new customer-driven capital plan. By continuing to put our customers first, we remain focused on delivering premium value to each of our key stakeholders. I look forward to talking to all of you at EEI about Entergy's unique and robust growth story. Before I turn the call over to Kimberly, I want to acknowledge that this call also marks a couple of important transitions for us. First, Bill Abler is moving to a new role, leading the commercial planning and operations for our utilities. And Liz Hunter, who introduced this call, is stepping in. Liz comes into the role with strong experience in our treasury operations, including fixed income and rating agency interactions. We are excited for both, and both will be at EEI in a little over a week as we complete our succession plan. The second transition is personally much more bittersweet. After 25 years, the last six and a half as our Utility Group President, Rod West is retiring from Entergy, and today marks his last earnings call. Rod has accomplished much over his career and recently, he has been critical to the redesign of our customer growth and stakeholder engagement efforts. He leaves us well-positioned to succeed because of the foundations he established, and much of my comments today reflect those efforts. Rod will also be with us a final time at EEI. Although given his track record, I suspect we haven't seen the last of him. I'll now turn the call over to Kimberly, who will review our financial results for the quarter as well as our long-term outlook.

Thank you, Drew, and good morning everyone. As Drew said, we've had a strong quarter, and with the bulk of the year behind us, we are raising the bottom of our guidance range by $0.10. We've also increased our capital plan in response to stronger customer growth and continued demand for renewables. As a result, we are raising our long-term outlook starting in 2026. As you can see on Slide 5, our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $2.99. This is lower than last year as last year's results included impacts from extremely hot weather. Excluding the effects of weather, earnings for the quarter increased. Results included regulatory actions across the jurisdictions net of expense increases from our customer-centric investments, primarily higher interest and depreciation expenses. Weather-adjusted retail sales growth was 5%, with our largest increase from industrials at 10%. Residential and commercial also contributed. O&M was also a benefit this quarter, mainly due to increased flex spending in 2023. This quarter's O&M result was in line with expectations that we provided on the last call. Turning to Slide 6. Our operating cash flow remains healthy at nearly $1.6 billion, which is $157 million higher than last year. Key drivers for the increase include the timing of fuel and purchase power payments and the timing of pension contributions. Turning to credit and liquidity on Slide 7, our credit metric outlooks remain at or above agency expectations. In August, S&P upgraded SERI's senior secured credit rating from BBB to BBB+ and maintained its positive outlook as a result of the progress we've made resolving outstanding litigation at SERI. S&P noted that SERI's ratings could be further upgraded when SERI's settlement with the LPSC receives FERC approval. In September, S&P changed Entergy New Orleans' outlook to stable from developing as a result of several constructive regulatory orders. As Drew mentioned, our teams had an exceptional response to Hurricane Francine, including from a cost perspective. Our current estimate is approximately $220 million to $240 million, roughly 85% of which is in Louisiana. We have begun engaging with regulators to ensure timely and efficient cost recovery. We don't expect to utilize securitization for this level of storm cost. Just as a reminder, we have $254 million in storm escrows available in Louisiana and $83 million in New Orleans. Turning to outlook. As Drew mentioned, our 2024 to 2028 capital plan has increased by $7 billion since Analyst Day to support higher industrial sales and continued customer interest in renewables. The new capital will be financed through a combination of higher operational cash flows and incremental debt and equity. We have submitted applications for $2.4 billion of loans from the DOE. These funding requests are currently in the second phase of the process and can lower our cost of debt for the benefit of our customers. Our previous plan called for $1.4 billion of equity in 2025 and 2026. We use forward contracts under the ATM to source the full amount of that need in just 10 months. Those contracts are expected to be settled and cash proceeds received in 2025 and 2026. With our latest capital plan, net of the contracted forwards, we expect our remaining equity needs to be $3 billion in 2026 to 2028. More than 80% of this is expected to close in 2027 and 2028. We can easily satisfy this need with the ATM, which remains an effective and cost-efficient tool. As I said earlier, we narrowed our 2024 adjusted EPS guidance range by raising the floor $0.10. Updated assumptions are provided on our progress against the guidance slide in the appendix of our webcast presentation. We've discussed how we flex spending to benefit customers and produce steady, predictable results. As a result of third-quarter weather and other changes, we will once again flex our spending for the remainder of the year in areas like vegetation maintenance, which improves customer experience and reduces risk. As a result of the new capital plan, we raised our adjusted EPS outlook, which are detailed on Slide 9. This year, we are giving a four-year outlook to provide a better understanding of the new sales growth, incremental capital, and resulting impacts. As you can see, the out-year adjusted EPS has stepped up meaningfully with a $0.35 to $0.85 annual increase between 2026 and 2028. The Board recently approved a 6% dividend increase. We expect to maintain that growth rate throughout the outlook period. As we do this, the payout ratio will decline as we support the strong growth in the business. We believe this is a good balance of supporting growth and returning capital to our owners. Also, consistent with the higher growth we are seeing, Entergy's Board recently approved a 2-for-1 stock split. Trading on a split-adjusted basis will begin on December 13. The outlook we have shown you today is on a pre-split basis. We will begin reporting on a post-split basis starting on the fourth-quarter call. Entergy's management team will be at EEI in less than two weeks, where we will give a comprehensive update that will include more details on our capital plan, our outlooks, and the preview of 2025 drivers. We continue to highlight our unique and robust growth story and evidence of our success capturing growth continues to play out. We are excited about the opportunities ahead of us and look forward to seeing you at EEI. And now, the Entergy team is available to answer questions.

Thank you. Our first question today comes from Shar Pourreza with Guggenheim Partners. Shar, your line is open.

Hey guys.

Morning Shar.

Morning Drew. Congrats obviously on a great quarter and a lot of updates. Obviously, big news on the 2026 inflection to 8% to 9% EPS growth. Can you provide color on kind of what drove such a major change? The Northern Louisiana customer deal looks huge, the 2.2 gigs of new generation and associated agreements. But have you changed kind of your probability of other load interconnections? Do you see more deals coming soon? And is the investment fully covered on the rate agreement? Or does it rely on the FRP as well? Thanks.

Thanks for the question. The increase in 2026 is backed by additional capital that supports substantial customer growth, and we have already factored in a considerable amount of growth in our plan based on probability. Additionally, there are specific customers we won’t add until we have signed electric service agreements, which Drew mentioned earlier. This is contributing to our growth and the increase in EPS. I believe you had a second question that I might have missed.

I guess is the investment fully covered under the rate agreement? Or does it rely on the FRP as well?

Yes, we can't talk specifically about that particular customer, but our investments we expect to be fully recoverable in our rate mechanisms that we have in place that continue to show progress against. Drew mentioned our Louisiana moved forward the FRP for the next three years, and we expect that to be a good use to continue to recover our investments.

And Shar, the punchline for that is that this customer will be covering their marginal costs. And of course, they'll pick up a portion of the fixed costs for the overall Entergy Louisiana company, which includes some of the overheads for storms and resilience investments and things like that. So, they're picking up their fair share and other customers should benefit from this new customer coming in.

Got it. And then the deal to transfer SERI from Louisiana to MS, does that create an additional capacity need for Louisiana? Can you satisfy that with the 3 gigs of solar, or does there need to be a resource adequacy backstop? And any kind of thoughts on consolidating SERI into a single state Mississippi asset?

Yes. In response to your first question, we continuously monitor our capacity in relation to expected sales growth. We believe we can effectively manage capacity requirements for both Louisiana and Mississippi moving forward, and we do not anticipate any additional needs beyond what is already planned. Regarding consolidation, we expect the FERC to approve the transfer of Louisiana's share to Mississippi, which will provide additional capacity for Mississippi. However, at this time, we are not planning any further changes.

Yes. It's about 200 megawatts that's moving over, and that's easily managed within Entergy Louisiana's overall portfolio. There are lots of opportunities from, as you mentioned, solar, there's potential for nuclear uprates in Louisiana. And of course, there's other investments that we can make in existing assets and new generating assets that will cover maybe even the balance. But it shouldn't be that big of a lift for Entergy Louisiana.

Got it. Perfect. And just before I sign off, I just want to take a second and obviously congratulate Rod. I know none of what we're seeing today could have been done without his leadership, and he's been such an integral part of Entergy's success. I mean he coined the phrase stakeholder engagement. So, I'm personally looking forward to seeing him kind of transfer his skills to another utility, God knows some could really use his skills. And obviously, big congrats to Abler—he knows what it means to us, hopefully, one day, I tell them over time, I can hit this Peloton output, but that's all I ask. See you guys soon.

Hey Shar, it's Rod. You're very kind, and I look forward to seeing you and others at EEI. Thank you.

Great. And our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Campanella with Barclays. Nicholas, your line is open.

Hey, thank you. And first off, I'll echo Shar's comments, what a way to pass the torch, and congrats to Bill and Rod. It's been great working with you guys. So, I just wanted to ask quickly, you kind of mentioned the growth rate is stepping up here post-2025. Can you talk about that 8% to 9% being sustainable past 2026? And what are the long-term drivers that maybe allow for that?

That's a great question, Nick. The key factors we discussed at Analyst Day are primarily related to onshoring and clean energy, as well as electrification technology. These trends are still very active, and we anticipate that they will gain momentum as we move into the next decade, especially concerning clean energy and electrification as society shifts more toward these areas. Our customers have a growing need to advance their decarbonization initiatives, and we expect many of these efforts to really begin to accelerate in the coming years. We're also engaging with large potential customers across various industries, not limited to data centers, but also including traditional industrial sectors. This is particularly promising for our business. The scale of facilities considering electrification in the industrial sector continues to expand, supported by large traditional industrial clients who are also evolving their energy mix. This will be a significant driver for us going forward, coupled with long-standing advantages we've enjoyed from our geographic location and commodity access in the Gulf Coast compared to other regions. We believe this growth will persist, and we are preparing for these opportunities to emerge.

Thank you for that. I noticed that when you discussed some of the drivers, you mentioned advanced nuclear. Could you elaborate on that? Will this be part of the regulated cohort? Also, regarding the working group with nuclear crews you mentioned, are you suggesting a large-scale, multi-state effort like an AP1000 or something similar? Thank you.

Not necessarily pointing to any specific thing. Interesting question of nuclear, certainly, that's something that we believe in. We believed in it for a long time. It hasn't always been a popular belief, but we still think that it is going to be critical for us to meet our ultimate requirements, not just for us as a company, but for us as a society to meet our carbon objectives in the future. So, we've been excited about nuclear for a long time, and we are having ongoing conversations. I went through a long list of things that we're doing. I won't repeat those. We obviously don't have anything to announce specifically today, but we are working towards that. Our group of stakeholders that I mentioned, I guess I could broaden that piece out, it's vendors, it's communities, it's elected leaders, and it's our commissioners in some cases. It's a wide group of folks that have similar interests. All of them recognize all of the, what I call, the policy benefits associated with nuclear, things like, of course, clean energy, but a large number of jobs, a large number, a big tax base, and big community contributors from a volunteer perspective. And from the grid's perspective, of course, they are very good, stable assets that really hold up the grid in important ways. So, there are a lot of policy reasons why you would like nuclear. And of course, there are a lot of challenges with getting past first of a kind, and that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about, how do we manage through those things to get through those first hurdles to get to where we all want to be, which is all those policy objectives that we think will help us get to net-zero in the future.

All right. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Nick.

Thanks, Nick. And our next question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Jefferies. Julien, your line is open.

Hey, good morning team and seriously, congratulations to all. Rod, Bill, team, I mean, just kudos all around, that culminates things very nicely here, honestly. Look, maybe just following up on what Nick was just saying a second ago here. I mean, as you think about the resource mix here, I mean, you mentioned a lot about solar and solar in storage hybrid resources. But again, going back to this SMR conversation that's been front and center here. I mean, is there a potential of a nuclear structure that would be ownership? Or is it more of a build and transfer? I don't want to be holding you too much, but obviously, with the amount of load growth that you guys are looking at, all the seriously considering it, I imagine.

Yes. We're looking at a number of different structures. Of course, you just have to keep in mind the scale of a nuclear project relative to the scale of some of our operating companies. And so, it's a pretty big undertaking from a risk perspective to ask Entergy Mississippi to build a project that could be $10 billion, which is bigger than their whole asset base as it exists today. So, those are the kinds of things we have to work through in order to be successful here. So, we haven't landed on a specific structure or anything like that. I imagine ownership would be an expectation for us simply because a long-term contract for our nuclear unit would also probably flow to our balance sheet in some important ways as well. That could be a credit challenge for us. So, the ownership role ultimately, I think is important, and of course, we are experienced with that. So, we're not concerned with that particular angle.

You appear to be successfully attracting large industrial resources and are now shifting that success towards data centers. How likely is it that you will continue to announce transformational customers? Is there potential for more opportunities across your various states? I’m hesitant to say that this is the end, especially considering how you have adapted to accommodate larger loads over the years.

Yes, we don't think this is it. At Analyst Day, we laid out some pretty large numbers—multiple gigawatts in several different spaces where we do believe there is an opportunity for us. And that conversation was based on actual customer conversations. That wasn't us in the back room trying to do some math to figure out what the possible was, those were actual conversations that we're having with customers today. So, we do think more is possible. It doesn't mean it's all going to arrive right away. Some of these projects take years to get off the ground, but we do think it's going to happen eventually; otherwise, we wouldn't have brought it up.

All right. Fair enough, guys. Thank you very much. I'll leave it there.

Thanks, Julien.

Thanks, Julien. And our next question comes from the line of Ross Fowler with Bank of America. Ross, your line is open.

Thanks, Morning. And Rod and Bill, congratulations to both. I look forward to seeing you both at EEI. So, just a couple of questions. One on the nuclear side, the recent Nuclear Summit hosted by the Mississippi Public Service Commission highlighted a lot of regulatory support for nuclear in the state. And would you say other states and jurisdictions across your service territory aligned with that? Or how should I think about it?

Yes, I would say there is a lot of interest in each jurisdiction about new nuclear because of all those policy things that I was talking about a minute ago. There are formal processes and groups set up in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana to explore. Each of them has multiple stakeholders involved, and we're excited about that. That's the way we like to operate. We like to operate with a lot of stakeholder engagement. So, that's all good. And so we're continuing to participate in those opportunities and those conversations going forward.

Okay. Thank you. And then maybe on the industrial project in Northern Louisiana, which you are bringing a lot more detail here a little bit over a week at EEI, but it looks like from the filing, they're going to pay for about 1.5 gigs of solar. And then can you just let us know, is this a data center or not a data center? And is this involved with the Holly Ridge East site with the Northeast site? Or is that another site up there that could be further developed? Thanks.

Yes, as is the case with most of the large projects, we can't—and we usually don't identify the type or the scope of the customer until that customer is ready to disclose. So, we wouldn't be in a position on the call to provide any more detail than what Drew laid out in his opening statements.

Okay, I'll wait for EEI. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Ross.

Thanks, Ross.

And our next question comes from the line of Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research. Steve, your line is open.

Thank you for the Halloween treat. Rob, I wish you all the best, and I hope we get to connect again. I would like to clarify the change in guidance. Is the change in CapEx and sales all due to this one customer and related spending, or are there other factors involved, or is it solely about that one customer?

There is more to it, Steve, it's not just one customer. We have significant additional solar investment. We have incremental transmission investment to support our customers. Obviously, a big chunk of the sales, as I said, is related to the one customer. But the capital is not just related to one customer.

Okay. So, it's the capital. But I mean, is the spending on the capital related to getting the system ready for that incremental load, or just—there's a little bit of other stuff, I guess, on the edges.

Yes, there is. It's not just a little bit. It's a significant amount of other stuff when it comes to the capital, but most of that I would say is related to that.

And then you had already announced some new gas plants in Texas, CCGT there. Is the cost roughly similar for—since it sounds like the engineering and such is going to be very similar to these other CCGTs?

Yes. As Drew said in his comments, Steve, that we expect them to all be standardized designs. So the Texas cost is—every site will be different based on how much transmission is needed and how they are specifically financed and specifically located. But generally, they are all in the same ballpark.

And the regulatory fees around it, like Mississippi, we were able to get cash CWIP, versus in Texas. And so there's a little bit of—there will be some more flavors in Louisiana when we're able to talk about that.

Okay. Regarding the balance sheet, it appears that the additional equity required to support the extra capital expenditures is relatively small. I recall there being a significant amount, not too different from the $3 billion already mentioned. Is this primarily due to improved cash flows and similar factors?

Yes, Steve, we had about $1.7 billion previously in 2027 and 2028. And the way we have structured both the addition of this customer as well as the funding of the capital that we've added, the renewables, for example, go under the green tariffs that are in place in many of our jurisdictions. It enables incremental cash flow that helps support the financing and then enables us to put in that moderate amount of equity, as you noted.

Okay. And then the metrics—are you comfortably above the 14%? And have you started including the nuclear PTC and some of that stuff yet? Or is that still not included?

Yes, we are comfortably above the 14%. We continue to build towards 15% over the outlook period. We have not included the nuclear PTCs that we think we're eligible for, and we think that they are credit positive, as we've discussed before. Louisiana, in their settlement, agreed to amortize those over a period of time, which gives that credit uplift. We did include the corporate minimum tax that we previously were going to use the PTCs to assume those offsets. In our forecast, we continue to build towards 15%; we've included the minimum tax, but not the PTC, which would give you further uplift is what we would expect.

Okay, last question just since you brought up new nuclear. Just—I know you can't go into most of the details, and things are still being developed. But maybe, Drew, you could just talk to how you're approaching the risk you would be willing to take on developing new nuclear, and also, they tend to be very large capital projects, and so just in terms of like project risk?

Yes, I think that's a good question, Steve. Obviously, I can't go into any specific details because we're in ongoing conversations about these types of things. But as I mentioned earlier, we have to take into account the size of the company relative to the size of the investment. And so I think ultimately, we'll have to make sure we have customers that can pay for this kind of investment. It will have to end up being a customer-led thing, and there are many stakeholders involved. Of course, there's us, there's communities and the states, and then there's the customer. The conversation will be about how do we collectively manage all the various risks that are out there so that we can get one of these things built or perhaps many of these things built. It's going to be the conversation as we get—especially as we get to nth of a kind. I think as an nth of a kind, you might have a different kind of a conversation around how to spread the risk. But certainly upfront, there will be a lot of in-depth conversation about how do we share the risk.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks, Steve. And our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Jeremy, your line is open.

Hi, good morning.

Good morning, Jeremy.

Rod, thank you very much for saving this great update for the end here. We appreciate it. We'll miss you. And Bill will miss you from your currency as well, but thank you. Maybe just moving to the business here, and one just—come back to the tariff commentary for this new customer here. Do you see this as a framework that's replicable going forward? Or is this kind of one-time in nature? Just wanted to see, I guess, your thoughts on the outlook there?

Good morning, Jeremy. Thanks for the question. As we talked before, our framework really is making sure that our customers—that new customers that are added are supporting their fair share. We did that in Mississippi with the work of the governor and the legislature there to make sure that they were contributing not just for what they added but also supporting the customer base more broadly. I think that's the framework that we continue to provide here without getting into specifics on the tariff. That is a guiding principle around how we think about these customers. We think that's replicable, and it works well with the stakeholder engagement that Drew discussed, where we can make sure we have all the business partners and all of the state and community partners to make sure they understand the benefits that these customers are bringing to all the parties involved.

Wonderful. Thank you. And then just moving back to the nuclear side real quick here, just wanted to see, I guess, as you think about the uprates here specifically, how long do you expect this evaluation to take? Is this about having new customers that cover the upgrade cost in their tariff, or just thinking about gating items or timeline to moving forward on the uprate specifically?

It depends on the plant and the upgrade. There's very—there are multiple projects that can give you various megawatts there. Some are fairly easy to go get, and we're actually already working toward them right now. Others are a lot harder and more expensive and would need more customer support. So, it varies depending on the potential. I would say most of those upgrades are in Arkansas and in Louisiana. They aren't really at Grand Gulf; there's no opportunities really there. We did our big upgrade there a little over about 15 years ago.

Got it. That's helpful. And again, Rod, we'll miss you. Thanks.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy. And our next question comes from the line of Bill Appicelli with UBS. Bill, please go ahead.

Hi, great. Thank you. Just a question, just to clarify, is all of the CapEx from this new large customer reflected in this update today?

I'm sorry, say that again, Bill. Just to make sure I heard it correctly.

Is all the potential CapEx from the new large customer reflected in the update today?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Okay. And then you talked a little bit about it, but maybe what's the customer bill impact relative to the outlook at the Analyst Day, right? If this new customer is willing to pay a little bit more, it sounds like in terms of the variable costs. How does that outlook change?

Yes. The trajectory from Analyst Day to now is actually down. And to the point that you made, as you increase sales growth, you're spreading fixed costs over more sales. We're able to moderate our bill trajectory a little bit. It's down to about 3.5% versus Analyst Day was closer to 4%. So that bears out what we're continuing to focus on, that these customers pay their fair share, and they contribute and help all other customers.

Okay. And then just one last question. You mentioned about the potential for nuclear clean tariffs. I guess, how does that interplay with some of the development? But is that more around just existing nuclear energy and what customers are willing to pay for that? And how would that sort of impact the rate design?

Yes, I think it's more around the existing. Once we get to the advanced stage, that's a whole different conversation because there are a lot more different risk elements that are moving into that. So, it's in the existing and particularly around some of the upgrades.

Okay. All right, great. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks, Bill. And our final question today comes from the line of Sophie Karp with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Sophie, your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the great update today. Just a couple of questions to clarify. I don't know if you can sort of provide granularity on the step-up in EPS and the capital. Obviously, you said some of these from the one large new customer, and some of these other—like how much of that is from that one large customer? Is there a way to kind of help us think about that?

Yes, we haven't broken that out, Sophie. But I would think about—you've seen a step-up in sales, and then the investment really is across generation, transmission, and generation, both dispatchable and solar resources, both for this and for other customers that continue to express interest in meeting their renewable objectives. So it's a blend of all of it, and we haven't broken it out specific to this customer.

Got it. And then, so is this customer— it sounds like you didn't need to request any new tariff to accommodate this investment and to make it so that the customer pays for like their share of fixed costs and et cetera. So, the existing tariffs are sufficient to kind of continue the arrangements with future customers. Is that correct?

Without going into too much detail because, again, our objective is to respect the customer's desire that we not provide too much detail. Like with any other customer, we have the option to take advantage of existing tariffs and to the extent that there is a need for a new tariff or we do a special contract with a specific customer to reflect their ability to cover their marginal costs, as Drew laid out. Any other aspect of the deal that might be unique to that customer, we have the flexibility to do that. We're not disclosing those details yet for the reasons that we've outlined. I know it's going to be a little frustrating, but we hope to be able to provide more clarity once the customer has gone public with their project.

Got it. Thank you. And then on the transfer of SERI or Louisiana share to Mississippi, does the Mississippi have to approve it? Or have they already approved it?

No. Mississippi has to approve it along with FERC as well.

And we expect both of those by the end of the year.

And lastly, on the—I guess, on nuclear. I'm just kind of curious if there's anything that you think you need to see in this nuclear development, particularly as it relates to before you're ready to pull the trigger on your own project. I understand, and I appreciate this is a very long-dated and a very slow-rolling process, but would you be comfortable being one of the first movers, I guess, in this space if it's sufficiently derisked? Or would you like to see somebody else successfully build a few of those projects before you step into it?

Yes, that's a great question. I mean, again, it depends on how those risks get allocated. Clearly, the nth of a kind, if you want to call it that, is a very different risk profile of the first of a kind. I don't think we would be comfortable taking on a ton of risk, particularly relative to the size of our operating companies at the beginning as the first of a kind. That doesn't mean we wouldn't be comfortable in that space provided we get the right kind of risk profile with our partners and other stakeholders that are part of whatever project we get involved in. But we're a little bit further away from cracking that completely at this point, but it is something that we are discussing actively with folks.

Got it. Thank you. Appreciate the comments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sophie. And that does conclude our Q&A session. Ms. Hunter, I will now turn the call back over to you to close us out.

Thank you, Greg, and thanks to everyone for participating this morning. Our quarterly report on Form 10-Q is due to the SEC on November 11th and 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 webpage as part of Entergy's Investor Relations website called Regulatory and Other Information, which provides key updates on our 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.