I will now turn the call over to Liz Hunter, Vice President of Investor Relations for Entergy Corporation. Liz.

Good morning. Thank you, John, 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 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. InterD 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 in which we

delivered strong financial results we launched our fair share plus pledge the one with meta beginning with financial adjusted EPS outlooks now cover the business updates in the quarter and as always several years we've worked with stakeholders to recruit data centers and capture the transformative impact they can texting and benefiting existing earlier this year we formalize that commitment with the launch of our share plus pledge fair share is it minimum bills and contour current customers of energy term support alone is the source of the estimated seven billion dollars of benefit current customers bills will be lower than they otherwise would have been the pressure they need community benefits a lot of new support for and it is in a dish work we committed to more than two years after tremendous work our employees for our communities while also providing so announced a new electrics for another data center included in the Meta has made other commitments 140 million dollars for energy efficiency Louisiana will match pair bringing the increase to 120 million dollars that will meaningfully improve executing the agreement energy Louisiana filed an application with the Louisiana Public Service needed as a result of adding the new meta data the investment includes seven new combined cities will be covered by payments from Meta whether from their tariff or other contributions CCS, nuclear uprates, or Meadows Clean Energy Goals, the Louisiana Lightning Initiative. And they directed the mission's lightning initiative, the lightning speed, approval for more than $15-14 billion, and pending the approval, also raising our sales and adjusted EPS outlooks. Kimberly will discuss in more detail. Beyond the meta agreement, we have signed ESAs totaling over 1,000. These agreements were from multiple industries across all our operating companies, and they indicate that customers will continue to receive data center in line to date including the recent agreement with meta we still moving beyond the customer growth update I'd like to cover a few more items means a key focus area and we will talk in more detail about that Orange County advanced Paris bringing it one step closer to delivering reliable power plan to be fully online and late recently our power delivery team identified more than 30 million dollars in capital state AV project our engineers developed a solution or materials cost and enables faster the improvement can be applied to future large transmission projects this kind of innovative thinking could continue to lower cost for an unlock additional energy Texas spending generation capacity they issued an RFP in February capacity and energy and our renewables for for more than 1,600 megawatts of renewables and slots in negotiation would be owned in addition we are actively managing proposals through Louisiana's accelerated renewable review process these are important tools to help as we indicated on the previous earnings call energy Arkansas filed its base rate case and late five million dollar rate change act would be less than 1% some of the features that we were time of use rate that provides residential customers with the opportunity to lower bills by shifting energy used to lower low income rates that provide a 50 percent discount on the customer charge for households that qualify for light heap assisted to resume entergy arkansas for test year frp entergy mississippi filed funds used during construction or significant economic development entergy arkansas filed its first annual generating arkansas jobs act rider in march and energy mississippi updated its interim facilities rate adjustment in january one additional comment about additional details on that as well our employees continue to work every day for the benefit of the communities we serve in the industry's LIHEAP action day in Washington DC to advocate for energy more than 15 years energy has also for low to moderate income customers and 2025 four million dollars in earned income tax credits putting money directly into our customers plan to walk through our multi-year strategy and outlooks in detail and you'll hear directly from our leadership team on the opportunity with large customers on how we partner together to create better outcomes for our key stakeholders. A view into our operational strategy to successfully execute on the large build cycle deployment opportunities. A review of our approach to maintaining financial discipline. And finally, a deeper dive into the significant near and long term to sustain our strong growth well beyond our five-year outlook. By continuing to put our customers first, we will deliver premium value to each of our key stakeholders discussing this in more detail with you at our investor day thank you drew good morning everyone I'll

now review our financial results and provide an update on our long-term outlooks our results for the quarter were straightforward our adjusted EPS was 86 cents as shown on slide 4 the primary drivers were from the effects of investments made for our customers including regulatory actions net of higher depreciation expense, taxes other than income taxes, and interest expense from financing capital expenditures. The per share increase was partially offset by a higher share count from settling equity forwards. Industrial sales growth was very strong at 15 percent as new and expansion projects continue to ramp up their operations overall retail sales increased six percent the earnings contribution from retail sales growth was essentially neutral as higher revenue from the industrial growth was offset by the effects of weather including positive weather in the first quarter of last year as drew discussed the meta contract creates significant customer and community benefits in addition we are refreshing our outlooks to reflect the new agreement and other minor updates the highlights are summarized on slide five this agreement further strengthens our retail sales outlook we now expect approximately eight and a half percent compound annual retail sales growth through 2029 driven by 16 percent industrial growth data centers continue to be a significant along with growth from a variety of traditional Gulf South industries, including LNG, industrial gases, petrochemicals, agricultural chemicals, and primary metals. As a reminder, we only add hyperscale data centers to our plan once we have a signed electric service agreement, and then we include them at minimum bill levels. This conservative approach ensures that we can count on the revenue that we've included in our plan our customer centric four-year capital plan is now 57 billion dollars which is 14 billion higher than our plan last quarter the increase includes the investment needs resulting from the new customer agreement primarily seven new cccts as well as battery storage projects all seven cccts have in-service dates in 2030 and 2031 such as not all of the capital for these units is in our four-year horizon. For the transmission investments in the filing, we've made a conservative assumption not to include them as we work through financing options. We have also not yet included the renewables or riverbend nuclear upgrade investments discussed in our filing. These would be added to the plan as specific projects are firmed up. The equity associated with our four-year plan is now 6.6 billion dollars at the lower end of our target range of 10 to 15 percent of the total capital plan our strategy to be proactive in addressing our equity needs provides certainty and flexibility giving us ample time to raise capital we have successfully sold forward contracts through our robust ATM program as well as the block transaction we executed last March. The agreements we have in place cover about 30% of our four-year need. With $1.9 billion already contracted, that leaves $4.7 billion to be sourced, which is not expected to be needed until late 2027 through 2029. Our forecast also includes $3 billion of hybrid instruments at parent. Slide 6 summarizes our credit ratings and affirms that our credit metric outlooks remain better than rating agency thresholds. Our plan reflects FFO to debt at or above 15% for Moody's metrics throughout the period, giving us capacity to manage events in the business as they occur. Our financial help is bolstered by the work we've done to strengthen our balance sheet and create benefits for customers including structuring large agreements to protect existing customers in our credit solidifying our pension funded status and receiving constructive regulatory mechanisms you may recall our system experienced an ice storm earlier this year mississippi's recent legislation provides a path to securitize the storm cost which we estimate in the 200 million dollar range this will lower the overall cost for customers we will submit our filing by october 5th and we expect the commission to issue a decision within 60 days of our filing as shown on slide 7 we are affirming our 2026 adjusted eps guidance and updating our outlooks for 2026 we're firmly on track and we remain confident that we will deliver on our guidance Looking ahead to the second quarter with other movements in our plan, we expect other O&M to be approximately 15 cents higher than the same quarter last year, reflecting higher vegetation spending and the timing of nuclear maintenance. Beyond 2026, today's update reflects our new capital plan, which includes investment resulting from the latest customer agreement, as well as other updates since the third quarter our adjusted eps outlook for next year is now 20 cents higher as the investment accumulates the increase grows radically to 50 cents in 2029 to six dollars and 40 cents we will extend our full outlooks to 2030 at our investor day in june as a preview the 20 From 2028 to 2029, year-over-year adjusted earnings per share growth was 12%. We expect approximately the same for 2030. Entergy is executing a differentiated growth strategy, delivering strong, sustainable results. Through our disciplined, customer-centric approach, we are creating value for all our key stakeholders, including our owners. Our plan is solid, with clear line of sight to achieve our outlooks, and we have significant opportunities before us. This update makes our already strong growth profile stand out even more. And now we're happy to take your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen,

we will now begin the question and answer session. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad again press star 1 if you'd like to ask a question in the interest of time we ask that you please limit your questions to one primary and one follow-up question we'll pause for a moment to compile the qna rosters thank you our first question comes from the line of shar perezo with

wells fargo please go ahead hey guys good morning morning sar morning true um so obviously a great update this quarter with the meta deal i just i just want to be crystal clear here is today's results just kind of raised the bar again um does the capex increase today fully support the deal or do you see additional capex and earnings accretion as we shift focus to the analyst day i mean you just had a strong update uh so should we assume there could be further updates to the capital plan in addition to the roll forward uh in in the june day analyst day thanks yeah good

Good morning, Shards. Kimberly, as I noted, $14 billion was added to the plan, the filings had about $15 billion, and the CCCTs closed outside the period. But what's not in the plan is the renewables that are under the agreement as well as some of the nuclear pieces, so certainly there is more opportunity both in the period and beyond. But what we've provided here today is largely around the generation pieces that you see in the filing.

And what we would probably expect.

That's perfect. And then just lastly, in terms of financing, what are the specific mechanisms that keep incremental equity funding for the $15 billion in new CapEx under 20%? Is that something that would get replicated beyond the current CapEx plan? I mean, most of the new investment is in Louisiana, but do you see the same accretion from D.C. clustering and Arkansas and Mississippi things?

Yeah, we've been able to maintain that 10% to 15% rate on our capital plan for some time, and I don't see any factors that change that. There's a number of factors that help support that, whether it's the mechanisms that we have, the forward mechanisms, the recovery of AFUDC during the construction period. I mentioned funding of our pension status, so it's a variety of mechanisms, but no fundamental structural change that I see that causes that to really shift as we think about new capital.

Okay. That's perfect. Thank you, guys, and a big congrats. You keep raising the

bar for the industry. Thanks. Thanks, Char. Our next question comes from the Alana Fliculis Campanella with Barclays. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning.

Productive quarter, like you said. So thanks for all the access. So I just wanted to follow up on some of your prepares. You said that you have a pipeline of seven to 12 gigawatts that are still not in the plan. You used to have this nice slide around EEI, which kind of showed how much equipment you secured to facilitate growth above the plan. So can you just kind of talk about after this meta announcement after the other gigawatt that you highlighted as well that you executed on in the quarter what is the the equipment outlook look

like for you now thank you hey Nick it's Kimberly appreciate the question yes Drew did confirm that even after this agreement our pipeline is still 7-12 and that underscores the fact that we continue to see that pipeline things move through the pipeline and that pipeline refresh from an equipment perspective, we'll give you a full update in just a few weeks at Investor Day. But we have additional turbines both on that slide, and we're not standing still relative to continuing to ensure that we can support that incremental growth, as well as we'll talk about what else is out there relative to all of our other industrial customers in just a few weeks.

Okay, thank you. Looking forward to that. And, you know, there was some discussions in the filing at the regulator about exploring kind of new large-scale nuclear studies at certain sites. And Drew, just maybe given your involvement in NEI, can you kind of talk about where the company stands on committing to large-scale nuke at this point, what the industry still needs to move forward, and what Entergy would need to kind of move forward? And is this something that we should be keeping in mind as we kind of get to this Analyst Day update? Thank you.

all right thanks nick the certainly new nuclear is something that we believe we will need when we you know we talked about adding new nuclear as part continuing to actively explore and investigate and with meta helps move that forward a little bit we are and that is that there is significant from a from a cost and a we are mindful of what that could mean to the balance sheet of companies so we we aren't going to enter into any agreement that existential risk we've said that many times at our investor day we'll have some ideas about how we could manage that and how we could move the needle on the call that could help us get there balance sheet isn't big enough to cover thank you thank you our next question comes from the

a lot of Jeremy's to net with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. This is Diana Niles on the call for Jeremy. Thanks for taking my questions today.

Good morning.

Good morning. So I was hoping, could you elaborate on the 1,000 megawatts of additional ESAs beyond the meta agreement and maybe how you would characterize the kind of industrial breakdown there and ramp going forward?

um yeah there are things that you're familiar with uh steel petrochems i don't have a specific by industry um lots of smaller ones you know there's there's many that are in the you know less than 20 megawatts kind of range but uh all together they add up to a thousand megawatts i don't have a specific and and i will also add that one other thing that i just got reminded of here in the room uh we probability weight uh those noted got it thank you um so to maybe

clarify there there could be upside should the um more traditional industrial load um all come on um at the full capacity that's true that is correct if they were all to come on

the probability weighted for a reason because that doesn't usually happen if they were all to come on yes there would be upside

Got it. Thank you. And maybe to piggyback on the prior question, and apologies if you already spoke to it and I didn't hear, but I saw that the study in the Meadow agreement speaks to AP1000s. Was that selection of technology a preference from Entergy or from the customer?

Well, we are supportive of any of the technologies out there, and we're investigating and talking with the vendors for all kinds of different technologies. Certainly, the AP1000 is one that has been constructed and built, and we're from BWR. What we're more concerned about...

Got it. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Our next question comes from the line of Richard Sunderland with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for the time today.

Hey, good morning.

Speaking of some of those other CapEx elements for meta that are outside of the plan, could you speak a little bit more to sort of guardrails, timing, other elements you have an eye to before you would go and add those to the plan? And then, I guess, similarly on the size and scope, I know the transmission you outlined, But, you know, what are you thinking about as an order of magnitude on the other buckets?

Yeah, good morning, Richard. Certainly we saw META, as well as other customers, have made commitments or signed up for new solar in, you know, multiple of gigawatt amounts. We do have open RFPs to fill those, as well as we're looking at our own self-builds that we would put into those RFPs to fill that, and we would be looking to fill that over the next several years, so you could see some of that come into this four-year plan, and you could see some of it stretch a little bit beyond that. But from a size and scope perspective, 2,500 megawatts in this meta-agreement, 1,500 megawatts in the previous agreement, all provides a good framing around incremental solar that we can have. And then you can have incremental in other areas as well. And I said solar, but it could also be batteries as well.

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful context. And then just turning back to the 7 to 12 gigawatt backlog, I'm curious if the meta addition today, did that move through the backlog? And so you then, you know, backfilled with new interest to get back to the 7 to 12 gigawatts. And then even on the industrial side, just like how have some of those trends been relative to crystallizing the 1,000 megawatts that you also referenced today, if you could provide any color there?

Yeah, so on the 7 to 12, you're exactly right. Meta would have moved through that. it's now in our plan so it's not in the 7 to 12 because that references data center opportunity that's outside of our plan um we you know our 7 to 12 was never our full scope of plan so as things move through we've got additional things coming in as well as we've had additional interest on the broader customers what drew referenced on the thousand megawatts is really closing out specific customers that either getting them to signed agreements which would adjust the probabilities as well but we'll give you a full update on that pipeline again in a few weeks but that continues to be strong as well great

thank you looking forward to the updates our next question comes from the line of Falls Zimbardo with Jeffries please go ahead hey good morning

can you hear me okay yeah you're breaking up but we can hear you now oh

good good no no thank you and again setting a low board for everyone by saying a productive quarter, my goodness. One that I did want to clarify, and Kimberly mentioned a little bit, just in terms of the conservatism on the kind of the minimum taker pay, minimum bills, is there any way to frame kind of what that benefit can be to earnings or cash flows? Just

any parameters that'd be helpful there? Yeah, we haven't given specifics around the minimum bill levels, except to say that on all of our industrial customers, we have minimums or demand charges and all the hyperscalers it is significantly higher than what we've had on traditional customers for the amount of incremental investments that they drive onto the system in the forecast period I would think about these customers are going to be ramping up and so their minimum bills are coming in during the period and they go into the ramping period so you're going to have more opportunity once they get to full load versus a minimum bill but certainly there could be some opportunity in your term if perhaps they ran faster, but generally I would think about it as we haven't given it, but the minimums are pretty substantial. So there's some margin, but it's not, you know, equal to what's already there. Okay. No, that's helpful. One

other, and again, can't wait for the investor day. Just as we think about like the capital you put into the plan today relative to the the 50 cents of increase in 2029 is there any information on shaping is that kind of back end weighted in the 2020 non-capex just it seems like there's more earnings to come not task leading question but more earnings to come from that capital any flavor you can provide be helpful thanks again yeah so you can see the shaping

of the earnings through 27 28 29 in the materials and then in my comments i did note for a preview to 30 that we would expect the year over year from 29 to 30 to be roughly the same as the year over year from 28 to 29. So that gives you some indication of how that shapes into that

fifth year. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you very much. Thanks, Paul. Our next question comes from

the line of Bill Abichali with UBS Financial. Please go ahead. Good morning. Just isolating

Using the meta-update here, I mean, is the $14 billion of incremental capital entirely attributable to the expansion of that agreement?

Yeah, Bill, and you can see that filing, that's pretty close to what is included there in the filing. There's something, and I went through what we included and whatnot, what wasn't, but that's essentially the ad here.

There has been other capital earnings, $14 billion.

Right. And then on top of that, there is still some residual generation span that'll show up in 30. And then you talked about the transmission renewables also not included, right? So when we think about the totality of what that meta deal is worth in terms of CapEx, it's obviously something north of the 14, right? It's an incremental several billion. Is that fair?

Yes. And Drew mentioned in his comments that it was more than 15 billion that happens outside the period. And certainly, depending on where the solar and battery, the renewable lands, gives you some upside opportunity there.

Okay. And then when should the full earnings run rate be realized on the meta-expansion? Is that, I know you're talking about the CODs are in 30, I think into 31, right? So is that when we think about the entirety of the return on the capital being reflected in financials, is that sort of at that point in time, is that sort of a 31, mid 31 period?

Yeah, the CCTs finished closing in 31, so most of your capital is in by then. We gave you the ramp up through 30, and we'll talk about what longer term visually looks like without giving you specific outlooks at Investor Day.

right okay all right that's it for me thank you our next question comes from the line is

steve flashman with wolf research please go ahead hi thanks uh i think my uh my questions a lot of my question got answered on this but just the sounds like there is meaningful earnings that come from the meta capex even though it is largely in place through 29 the earnings tail a little later is it uh you know just as the projects come on is that not that 50 cents is not a lot but

yeah yeah yeah see what you're seeing you know with all construction projects you've got afudc that sort of thing in leading up to the construction but leading to the close through the construction period and then again in 30 i would see a similar up to inrattably as to what we saw in the years that we gave you for, you know, getting you to the

similar. Great. And then just the $14 billion that you added to CapEx, is that before Kayak or after Kayak? Because we don't have rate base to kind of match up to from you.

Yeah, I would think about that related to the CCCTs as largely overnight costs. So we did, I mentioned the transmission wasn't included, and then the financing costs largely are not included in there either.

Okay. You also mentioned this renewables RFP, separate from META, the four and a half gigawatts, of which two-thirds would be owned. Is that in your plan, a two-thirds owned or not?

About half of that is not in our plan, is the way to think about that. So pretty good upside there relative. So we had some projects that we had worked to save harbor or just get ahead of relative to other solar interests, but there's a good bit of that that's not in the plan.

And then just on, I know you don't need equity, you know, for a while, timing-wise, you know, late 27 or 28, 29. Just how are you thinking about just, though, approaching equity or you continue to try to get out ahead of that and just, yeah, any thoughts on ways to approach getting the equity for this?

Yeah, to your point, we don't require equity until well into 27, but we have been proactive about ensuring that we stay ahead of that. 30% is already on the table, but the ATM has been an effective tool. We were able to use a block last year, but I would expect that we don't require additional equity until 27, so we can't speak to the specific timing, but I would think about it that way. Thank you. Our next question comes from

the line is Sophie Karp with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank

you for taking my question and congratulations on a strong update here. So, maybe if you could talk a little bit about the regulatory mechanisms you have, particularly in Louisiana and other areas that they experience in this significant growth. Do you feel like you have sufficient regulatory and recovery mechanisms in place, and is there a risk of some regulatory fatigue if, you know, the capital grows as much as it has been growing? Thanks, Sophie. That's a good question,

and good morning. I think we have, certainly, you've seen our regulators begin to lightening, and I think that's really, that's why we've really been focused. We've been able to do

all right thank you and then uh maybe real quick um if you could maybe come and give us some color on how the um i guess the situation oil markets and um around the conflict um in the middle east is impacting your industrial customers either the positive for them or the negative for them like what's uh what is the situation on the ground in your territory uh great question sophie so the the

i guess generally it's been i would say it's probably been positive for most of our industrial customers. The things that they are looking at increased where we've been early in the year, obviously, they're higher now. Great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Steve D'Ambrisi with RBC Capital Markets. Please go

ahead. Hey, Drew and Kimberly. Thanks very much for taking my question. I just had a quick one. If I look at the change in terawatt hour sales growth from 4Q to this update, it looks like it's just about three terawatt hours and so if i try to back into what that means from uh you know incremental load from data centers it seems like it's only 400 or 450 megawatts and so can you just talk a little bit about what how the meta facility ramps because if it's you know five and a half incremental gigawatts it feels like there's a ton of terawatt hour sales that are going to come beyond 2029 so just want to understand what that means both for you know earned returns and also like capital deployment beyond 29.

Steve, it's Kimberly. You cut out a little bit, but I think your question was, how does the meta agreement ramp and how do I think about the tier-west-hour sales that you're seeing? You know, certainly we have to build to support this customer. You see that in the CCCT deployment, which come online in 30 and 31. So they are able to get some ramp in the period, but your your full loads aren't going to come online until all of those assets come online but recall that we have minimum bills on these customers as they ramp and that minimum bill is reflective of you know ensuring that they cover the incremental costs they drive over the life of the contract so that minimum bill may not be directly in sync with the ramp for example. So what we've included in our forecast is the minimum bill here, but you should continue to see a ramp as those assets come online.

Okay. And just again, it seems like it's really a very small amount in 29, and I know you overruled to 30, but any flavor for what adding 5 gigawatts to the existing sales forecast does to sales kickers through uh 2032 or something like that like because it's just it seems very very like an increment of significant incremental step up i just want to understand like if that has customer benefits or rate benefits that you can pass back or any way to think about that yeah

we'll give you the sales growth through 30 in just a few weeks and then we'll show you sort of you know how we think about opportunities longer term but all customers are benefiting from this rampant and from the minimum bills to the point that Drew made both from the fair share component ensuring that they're paying their portion of the incremental cost, and that will flow through the traditional mechanisms in Louisiana, similar in other jurisdictions. So there is opportunity and benefit there for other customers, but we'll provide you that sales forecast in just a few

weeks through 2030. Great. That's all I have. Thanks very much.

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Ellinghouse with Siebert Williams. Please go

ahead. Hey, good morning everybody. Drew, vis-a-vis the Iran issue, is that providing some impetus or interest in new ESAs and in their, you know, sort of calculus of where

the world markets are um i mean certainly we have a lot of natural significant energies i mean we're sort of community that values industrial investment all of that has meant that you know when people look around for places to invest in industrial facilities of geopolitical uncertainty so to the extent to invest location a little bit more but it's not a new scenario Sure, that makes sense. I'm just curious whether it was expediting anybody's thoughts.

Are there any other cottonwood-type transactions in your mind, sort of in the hopper?

I mean, we normally don't talk about M&A, but I will say in this case, in terms of other generators, I would not say we'd expect a significant part beyond cottonwood.

Given the significant, can you give us any thinking about the cadence of dividend payouts over, you know, the four?

Sure, it's Kimberly. We have historically had a 6% growth rate on our dividend, and we're obviously growing faster than that, and so that has an effect on your payout ratio. But that's been our philosophy, to balance the growth rate in the earnings and our sales growth rate relative to the growth rate in the dividend to date. That's the philosophy that we've taken to date, and I think that that is an appropriate balance as we think about that over the next four years.

Lastly, I guess, Mississippi data center interest. Can you talk about, or maybe this is something, what's at this point, and is there a significant bucket of unplanned at this point?

Yeah, I would reference you back to our 7 to 12 gigawatts, which is not OPCO-specific, but that's our enterprise view of the data centers. We don't provide that breakdown sort of either where they are in the pipeline or where they are specifically by OPCO. So, but still a significant opportunity before us, one that we're working to shore up and to capture as much as we can. So lots of opportunity there, but no specifics by operating company.

And the data centers don't have any data centers. All the updates. It's great quarters. Thank you.

Our last question for today comes from the line of Andrew Weisel with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hey, everybody. Good morning. Frank? Two for me. Thank you for adding me in here at the end. First, in terms of financing the incremental 15 billion of CapEx or so for Meta, I understand that Meta is going to be paying for that under the fair share plus commitment grade setup, of course, but you're obviously including that in the CapEx and the equity plan. Maybe just remind me or help me understand how that works from a timing and cash flow perspective. If you're not going to collect the revenue, or how and when will you collect the revenues relative to the construction and equipment payments, and how and when will the $2 or $7 billion be returned to customers? How does that work in terms of the timing and how that impacts your credit metrics? I know you reiterated the credit metrics, but how does that work in terms of the short-term impacts of credit rating metrics and your

conversations with the agencies and cash flows yeah our our fair share plus as a reminder is uh is is our commitment in ensuring that these customers are paying their fair share and that covers a number of areas one is ensuring that they're paying to support not just the incremental costs that they drive but also the embedded costs that are already in customers And so that shows up in ways like in Mississippi, we've talked before about Superpower Mississippi where they're deploying $300 million of capital without incremental cost to customers because of the embedded cost that AWS is supporting enables us to continue to make investments for customers without incremental cost. So I think about it that way. Another example is in Louisiana, we have securitized storm costs on their bills already related to previous storms. And these customers will pick up their allocable portion of those costs. So customers that were paying them will see a slightly less cost. That's how that $7 billion effectively flows back.

Okay, in terms of the credit metrics and timing issues, is that – how does that work? And is there going to be temporary pressure on the credit metrics during construction?

Yeah, as I noted in my comments, our credit metrics on a Moody's basis are 15% or better throughout this four-year forecast period during this heavy construction period. And that has a lot to do with all the constructive mechanisms we have as well as how we are contracting. So that doesn't, in and of itself, put pressure on the metrics because, again, it's enabling you to make investments as these customers pay a portion of incremental costs that customers otherwise would have paid for previously.

Okay. Very impressive. Then one last one, if I may. The 15% industrial sales growth in the first quarter was notably better than your guidance of 10% for the year and a big pickup from last year's full year result of 7%. And you mentioned in the remarks that it was a combination of new and expansion projects. Can you just elaborate a little bit on what you're seeing, and does that change your full year, your expectation for the full year?

Yeah, we did have a good first quarter, but on a year-over-year basis, we expected customers to ramp up. That's what you're seeing there. It doesn't change what we expect for the full year. It does shore up that, you know, those customers aren't coming online. but even if the volumes were off a little bit you would see that you wouldn't see a decrement because of the minimum bills and other structures that we have um to support so we're comfortable with our guidance and our um and you know we're pleased to see the volumes starting to come in the position

you're toward the high end or is it too early to say something like that yeah it's way too early

it's uh first quarter so we've got we obviously have to get through the summer and then all the

way through the end of the year okay sounds great thank you very much thank you Andrew

thanks Andrew and that concludes our Q&A session for today I will now turn the call back over to

Liz for closing remarks Liz thank you John and thanks to everyone for participating this morning our quarterly report on form 10-q will be filed with the SEC at a later date and provides more details and disclosures about our financial statements events that occur prior to the date of our filing may 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 Intergy's Investor Relations website called Regulatory and Other Information, which provides key updates of 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 ladies and gentlemen this concludes today's conference call you may now disconnect your lives.