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Annual General Meeting · 2025-05-15
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Good morning, everyone. I'm Lisa Groh, President and Chief Executive Officer of IDACOR and Idaho Power, and a director of both companies. On behalf of the directors, officers, and employees of IDACOR and Idaho Power, I want to welcome everyone to the annual meeting of IDACOR shareowners and recognize that 2025 marks the 109th year Idaho Power has been serving our customers. Thank you for being here with us today. We're hosting this meeting again virtually only, and today's webcast is being recorded. A replay will be available on our website starting tomorrow for the next 12 months. As we get started, I'd like to recognize the other directors and director nominees for our companies. Odette Volano, Annette Elge, Judy Johanson, Dennis Johnson, Nate Jorgensen, Mike Kennedy, Scott Madison, Susan Morris, and Dr. Mark Peters. All of our directors and nominees, with the exception of myself, qualify as independent directors. Nine of the existing directors have been nominated for re-election at today's annual meeting, and we have one new nominee as a candidate for our board, Mike Kennedy. Information on each director and nominee can be found in the proxy statement for this annual meeting. I would also like to thank our two retiring directors, Ron Gibson and Rick Navarro, for their service on the board. Both retired from the board prior to today's meeting. Ron joined the board in 2013 and Rick in 2015. team. Throughout their years of service, they provided invaluable guidance with their strong financial, operational, and executive backgrounds. We thank them both for their many contributions to IDACOR and Idaho Power. Before we move on, I would also like to recognize our officer team. Their leadership and service make us the strong organization we are today. Their impressive and various biographies are on the IDACOR website. We have an outstanding leadership team that is excited about our business and committed to serving our customers, employees, and you, our owners. For today's meeting, we'll start with formal business, and then Brian Buckham and I will provide additional comments about our company. We'll end with a Q&A session, and of course, our officer team welcomes questions from our share owners outside of this meeting as well. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements that relate to future events or expectations. I'd like to remind everyone that the company's future results could differ from those discussed at this meeting. Factors that could cause future results to differ materially can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our 10-K and 10-Q reports. I encourage you to review those documents, other documents we file with the SEC, and our press releases for material information about our company. It is now my pleasure to officially call the 2025 annual meeting of IDACOR share owners to order. This annual meeting is being held to address four items. To elect ten directors for a one-year term, to address an advisory resolution to approve executive compensation, to approve the IDACOR long-term incentive and compensation plan as amended and restated, including the authorization of 1.1 million additional shares under the plan, and to ratify the appointment of our independent registered public accounting firm for 2025. IDACOR has approximately 110,000 shareowners located throughout the United States and internationally. The results of the shareowner voting for the annual meeting are typically determined by the return of proxies from shareowners who are not present, and we have those results today. Before moving on, there are a few administrative matters that need to be addressed. First, a majority of the shareowner's voting power outstanding is represented at this meeting by proxy. Consequently, we have a quorum. Second, in accordance with the IDACOR bylaws, no matters other than those stated in the proxy statement or that have been properly raised by a shareowner in advance can be considered at this meeting. Finally, if you have not already voted your shares, you may do so now by following the voting instructions provided in the virtual meeting email sent to you this morning. We will now proceed with the formal business of IDACOR's 2025 Annual Meeting. The first item is the Election of Directors. Ten director nominees are up for election at this meeting. All 10 have been nominated for one-year terms to expire at the 2026th annual meeting. The second order of business is the advisory resolution to approve executive compensation, commonly referred to as the say on pay vote. The third order of business is to approve the IDACOR long-term incentive and compensation plan as amended and restated, including the authorization of 1.1 million additional shares under the plan. The fourth order of business is to ratify the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as IDACOR's independent registered public accounting firm for 2025. The company's Board of Directors has unanimously recommended a vote for each of these four proposals. The IDACOR proxy holders have voted all shares represented by proxy as submitted on all four Based on the proxies, the preliminary results of the voting indicate that each of the 10 director nominees named in the proxy statement has been elected for a one-year term, and all of the proposals have passed. At this time, the voting has now closed. This concludes all items scheduled for action at this annual meeting. The business portion of the meeting is now adjourned. As we move to the informal portion of the meeting, I'll open by thanking our dedicated employees for the great work they did serving our customers and owners this past year. Their accomplishments in 2024 include helping IDACOR achieve its 17th consecutive year of earnings growth, recording the third safest year in company history, and keeping our customers' lives on 99.96% of the time, despite increasing energy demand that saw us at new summer and winter peaks. This is a busy and exciting time for our company, and I am so grateful for the people who are the driving force behind our success. Customer growth remains strong for Idaho Power. Our customer base grew by 2.6% in 2024, and we now serve more than 650,000 customers. We expect this growth to remain robust as our local economy continues to outperform national trends with several major projects under development in our area moody's most recent gdp calculations for idaho power service area forecast growth of 4.5 percent in 2025 and 3.7 percent in 2026. notably idaho's total labor force surpassed 1 million workers for the first time as of december 2024. Interest remains high from businesses looking to locate and expand within Idaho Power Service Area. In addition to projects in our core industries of food processing, manufacturing, distribution, and warehousing, we've fielded numerous requests from energy-intensive customers. We've signed a preliminary agreement with one such project, and discussions with others are underway. These new projects would be in addition to our ongoing work with the Meta Data Center and Micron's major expansion in Boise. Idaho Power's work for those two customers is tracking ahead of schedule as we build substation and transmission infrastructure to support their energy needs. We're also preparing for infrastructure upgrades to support Perpetua Resources, recently permitted mine in central Idaho. As a reminder, these large load customers pay up front for upgrades necessary to interconnect, and we work closely with them to establish timeframes that allow us to meet their energy needs while mitigating impacts to the rest of our customers as our customers energy needs grow and we work to keep our infrastructure development on pace with that growth our regulatory strategy is vital to financing our operations keeping prices affordable and continuing to achieve excellent results for our owners our 2024 idaho limited issue rate case reached its conclusion at year end with the idaho commission approving an overall increase at 50.1 million dollars or 3.7 percent effective january 1st of this year this increase helps us recover some of our costs associated with infrastructure investments and labor expenses not included in our 2023 idaho general rate case the idaho commission has also been supportive of our significant investment in the safety of our communities through enhanced wildfire wildfire mitigation efforts. In Oregon, our general rate case reached a settlement resulting in an overall increase of $6.7 million, or 12.14%, effective October 15th of 2024. That completed our first Oregon general rate case since 2011. We will need additional rate filings to collect the level of revenue necessary to finance our operations and allow for a reasonable rate of return. In Idaho, we plan to file a 2025 general rate case at the end of this month and expect commission-approved rates would go into effect in early 2026. Affordability remains top of mind for a company, and our prices remain 20 to 30 percent below the national average as sales growth offsets a large portion of the revenue requirement increases. We also shared good news with our customers this spring as we filed our annual power cost and fixed cost adjustments proposing a substantial rate decrease for Idaho customers. As we prepare our 2025 IRP, the latest five-year forecast for retail sales growth is 8.3% annually. This forecasted growth continues to drive our need for additional energy resources. In 2024, we added nearly 200 megawatts of solar and battery storage to our system. Over the next few years, we plan to add wind, solar, and battery projects, as well as power purchase agreements to meet projected load deficits. This includes the Wyoming wind project, 300 megawatts, of which will be our first company-owned wind resource. In our IRP modeling and RFP outcomes, we're also looking at possible expansion of gas-fired resources to meet energy and capacity needs. Transmission remains a high priority for Idaho Power. We expect to break ground on the Boardman to Hemingway project this year with an anticipated in-service date of no earlier than 2027. We've also entered an agreement to become a partial owner of the Swift North high-voltage line that will run from the Robinson Summit substation near Ely, Nevada to our midpoint substation. Once Swift North is in service, Idaho Power will purchase an approximate 11% ownership interest. In addition, we entered into a capacity entitlement agreement for approximately 11% of additional capacity on the line over a 40-year term. We expect construction to begin as early as this year and take approximately two years to complete. The Gateway West transmission line also remains in our plans as we continue to work with Pacific Corps to coordinate the timing of next steps that best meet customer needs and system needs. With those updates, I'll turn the time over to Brian for a finance update.
I'm going to be brief because we spent a lot of time on our fourth quarter earnings call and then our first quarter earnings call this year talking about the financial side. I'm going to start with the main point, which is that we have another strong year in 2024, achieving an unprecedented 17th consecutive year of earnings growth, as Lisa mentioned. Customer growth has been a big part of that. And for the first time, the accelerated amortization of accumulated deferred investment tax. Along those lines, Lisa talks about what we're doing on the operational side to address growth and continued reliability of our system. On the financial side of that, we're working lockstep in executing our plan to finance and recover in the regulatory process, the investments that we're making. On the fourth quarter call, we noted that we're forecasting spending around $1.1 billion per year on average over the next five years, and a total cashback for five years amount, a doubling of our average annual. Note that there's still potential upside to our forecast, as I've mentioned before, depending on the outcome of pending RFPs. And financing and building the needed infrastructure, that's just one element of execution. We also have to convert it into rate-based to keep. Coming out of our most recent Idaho case, our rate-based, we estimate rates more than doubling our rate-based. Working on converting our capex to that regulatory process, it inevitably has some element of lag, but we're hoping to reduce some of that lag to retain our financial health. We have a strong balance sheet now, and we're going to keep it that way through this long growth cycle with an average 50-50 debt equity cap. The amount of external financing we noted on the fourth quarter call that we estimate we need for 2025 through 2029, just for the capital that's already in the plan, is about $1.4 billion in equity and about $2.2 billion in debt. Some of that debt and equity already this year with the equity. I think it's important to note that we remain focused on maintaining affordability for our customers through all of this. The thoughtful regulatory construct in Idaho looks to allocate costs in some of our infrastructure and customer growth in the denominator of our regulatory equations and long-lived assets. As we noted on recent earnings calls, we believe IDACorp is among the leading earnings growth and earnings quality profiles in the industry over our forecast window. That gets its genesis from a demonstrated CapEx needs for our growing customer base. With steel already in the ground, it increased 3.6% last year. That was our 13th consecutive year with a dividend increase. with a cumulative growth of 187%. That's a slight slowdown in the growth rate of the dividend compared to the last few years, and that's reflective of our reinvestment of capital and the business company has paid a dividend every quarter. With that, I'm going to turn the presentation back over to Lisa.
Thank you, Brian. As we conclude, I want to reiterate my thanks to our employees for their outstanding work this past year. Their efforts to ensure the safety of our employees, customers, and communities paid off with one of our safest years ever. They continue giving back to the communities we serve, donating more than $1.4 million in thousands of volunteer hours to support worthy causes. Our company's commitment to environmental stewardship remains strong as we continue to support native fish and wildlife species, work to improve water quality, and renovated key fish hatchery and recreational facilities along the Snake River. We are committed to another successful year serving our customers and owners in 2025. five. The challenges we face are real. Balancing safety, reliability, and affordability in an environment of rapid growth is not an easy task. Thankfully, our team has a proven track record of embracing challenges, powering through the difficulties that come our way, and continuing to build a secure energy future that we can all be proud of. Thank you for your continued trust in IDACOR as an investment and for joining us for this annual meeting. With that, we're ready to To begin the Q&A session, you should see a Q&A icon near the bottom of the webcast screen. You can click that to submit a question, and we'll take as many questions as time permits on a first-time basis. And I see that we have a few questions. I'll start with one that the question was basically how will our operations be impacted by the repeal of many of the elements of the IRA of 2022, including business and customer incentives. And I think the short answer is that that still remains to be seen. We are watching that carefully, and we are in a growth cycle, so we would need these resources regardless, and we'll just have to, again, wait and see how this all unfolds. The second question is basically how are we going to power all of this in our portfolio choices, and I'll just remind everyone that we go through a very robust planning process through our integrated resource plan. And as I mentioned in my remarks, we really look at it from a perspective of being safe, reliable, affordable, then clean in that order. I've said many times publicly that, of course, safety is first. That is the value of this company. Reliability comes next because nobody really cares how cheap it is if it doesn't work. And, of course, affordability is a real challenge for all of our customers. And then we do have a clean goal to be 100% clean by 2045. And, you know, we have been really open about the fact that that is a goal, not a commitment, because we are going to need technology that isn't commercially available right now to get to that. But it is a 20-year goal. And so we feel that that is a practical goal. But we have to guide through this period of growth, and gas, quite frankly, is about the only thing that you can build that has the operating characteristics that are needed. We do have a robust portfolio of renewable energy, but there is only so much that we can integrate into this system and keep it reliable. So that's how we've always done our planning. We use a least risk, least cost framework as we do our analysis, and we're just getting ready to publish our 2025 IRP, reminder that we do one of those every two years. And again, in this time of just incredible growth and technology development and policy changes, it is a big, it is a very big challenge. And again, as I said, our team is up to that challenge and they're doing a fantastic job. And so I think that answers, there was some other questions that came in prior to the meeting that were kind of in the same vein. So I think that covers sort of what our generation plans are, and that IRP document will be available publicly in the next several months, and so we invite you to take a look at that And with that, I don't see any additional questions, so I will thank you all again for attending the annual meeting and for your questions. We appreciate your investment in IDACOR, and we look forward to connecting again at future annual meetings. Thank you very much.