Entergy Corporation (ETR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. Thanks, everyone, for coming. Before we begin, I'm going to bring up Joe Carey from the New York Stock Exchange, so he can give us a brief safety overview, and then we'll get things going. Joe?

Good afternoon, and welcome to the exchange. My name is Joe Carey. I'm the Fire & Life Safety Director here. I'd ask in the event of an alarm activation that you stand by and we will do a quick investigation and make announcements from the Fire Command station. If an evacuation becomes necessary, I'd call your attention to the exits at the rear and to my right, your left, the floor is served by 3 fire enclosed exit stairs. If you go right out this store, it will bring you around to Stair C. And if you follow the hallway back to reception and make a right, it will bring you to Stair B. Our preferred route would be the way you came in, out to reception and into the elevator lobby. Our Fire Tower Stair A is there. We will make announcements and assign personnel to you. Know that we are constantly monitoring our building. Enjoy your event.

Thank you, Joe. At this point, I'm going to welcome Leo Denault, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, to kick things off.

Well, thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you very, very much. It's been 4 years since we were last year at the stock exchange to do a live and in-person Analyst Day. And we're very excited to be back. We're very excited to have all of you back, but we're more excited to be able to talk to you about how our business continues to improve. And so there's one thing that I want to make sure that you take away from all of our discussion today, and that's the fact that Entergy is a compelling investment right now. But if you look at all the things that we're going to talk about today and the runway that we have and the growth opportunities in front of us, that investment opportunity becomes even more compelling as you move out into the future. And it all starts with serving our customers. You may recall several years ago we pivoted our focus as it relates to customers. And it's nuanced, to be sure, when you say it. But what we started to focus on is the outcomes our customers desire rather than merely providing the input of electricity. And we were convinced at the time, and we told you at the time, and you may not remember this, but what we told you was, if we focus on the outcomes our customers desire versus the input of merely providing electricity, we will come up with investment opportunities on their behalf that we wouldn't have thought of if we were just serving the grid. We are confident that we'd be able to do that. And what we've been seeing over the course of the last several years is that opportunity is probably bigger than what we ever anticipated. What are our customers asking us to do? The first thing they're asking us to do is just keep up. The fundamentals driving the businesses that serve the Gulf Coast, that we serve along the Gulf Coast, are solid in the near and the long term. Now I recognize that there's a lot of turmoil in the markets today, literally today, and that there's a lot of turmoil in the economy, potential recession, et cetera. But that doesn't change the fact that the fundamentals of these businesses near and long term continue to be strong. In fact, some of those fundamentals are stronger because of the turmoil that we see in the world today. And we believe that's going to continue out in the future. And importantly, so do those customers. So the first thing we need to do is meet their needs. Now could there be some sort of disruption in the middle of this that moves things around in timing? Sure, there always has been. But the fact remains that the fundamentals driving these are as good as they've ever been. Because our customers are relying on us more and more and because they've experienced an increase in the severity and the frequency of weather events globally, they're asking us to invest in a more resilient system. And we've got a plan to do that. And when we do that, we benefit our customers in 2 really important ways. One, again, if you look at an increased frequency and increased intensity of storms with more damage, we can lower the storm restoration costs by investing on the front end. It's a lot cheaper to have a planned construction program towards resilience in the front end than to come back after a storm and quickly do the work of years and weeks in storm restoration. The other aspect of this, again, our customers are relying more and more on us, both in their homes and their businesses. The other aspect that saves them money is not in their electric bill, but it's the economic loss of disruption that they experience during the storm event. And if we can shorten that period of time or eliminate it altogether, that can go to pay for the resiliency investment as well. And our investments are planned to do just that. The other thing that our investors, our customers are asking us to do is to invest in a cleaner portfolio. Now fortunately for them, we have one of the cleanest large-scale generating fleets in the country already, and they benefit from that in their Scope 2 emissions. But as those customers grow, they need to offset the incremental emissions of their growth expansion with renewable energy. And what they want to do is take advantage of the products and services that we're developing for them right now, our green tariffs, for example, to be able to offset those emissions of that ever-growing emissions profile that they see in their Scope 2 emissions. So that's why you've seen us accelerate our renewable deployment because they're asking us to do that on their behalf. But it doesn't stop with their Scope 2 emissions. They need to eliminate their Scope 1 emissions as well. In order to eliminate those Scope 1 emissions, again, they're asking us to accelerate our renewable footprint. So when we start to see electrification in the industrial sector, that's not only a growth in the sales number, but it's an acceleration of the deployment of renewables. And that's why you've consistently seen over the last couple of years our investments in renewables, what we see coming in by '26 and by 2030 is going to continue to increase. And the fact of the matter is that this is the most unique position of anybody in the space because of the emissions profile of the industrial sector that is our customers. All of our customers have some form of decarbonization objective. They have 2030 interim goals. They have 2040 and '50 goals. They're going to have to attack those Scope 1 emissions. That's an investment opportunity for us on their behalf as they electrify, as they look at carbon capture and sequestration, as they look at blue, pink and green hydrogen. All of those are very electricity-intensive endeavors, and we expect to benefit from that because we're going to be investing on their behalf so that they can switch those from Scope 1 emissions to Scope 2 emissions as the Scope 2 emissions can be 0. This is the most unique decarbonization story in the industry today. And we intend to take advantage of it on behalf of our customers because they're demanding it from us today. Now the other thing we know that we need to address, given what's going on in the markets today with gas prices and inflation as well as the investments that we need to make, is that we need to be focused as we always have been on affordability. Good news is we start from a good place with some of the lowest rates in the United States. There are a lot of ways that we're going to make sure that we continue to focus on making this affordable for our customers. First and foremost, the investments that we're making today do have offsets to the incremental burden that they put on our customers. If you think about the gas-fired generation that we've put in place over the course of the last several years, highly efficient, low-heat rate units, if you think about renewables that we deploy, all have a tendency to reduce fuel cost. And that impact is greater at $7 gas than it was at $2 gas. So those investments make a difference. The investments in resiliency, as I mentioned, offsets future storm costs, also saves customers' money with less disruption today. Keeping a handle on our operating costs obviously provides the opportunity for us to contribute to more affordability for our customers. The load growth that we've seen for the last decade and that we continue to see out into the future, spreading those fixed costs over more megawatt hours will also contribute to affordability for our customers. We're going to do everything that we can to make sure that we continue to decrease the impact we have on the customer's wallet, including looking for federal funds to offset, historical storm costs as well as offsetting the storm hardening costs that we're going to do in the future by taking advantage of the infrastructure bill, BRIC grants and things like that. All of this is supported by a very solid track record. We've been able to execute. We've meaningfully moved the company focus to our utility business over the course of the last 10 years, reducing risk. We've put in place internal capabilities that allow us to execute not only on our major construction projects, which we've done a really good job with, on time and on budget, but also in our ability to manage the business day in, day out. We've decreased the risk and improved the financial flexibility of the company over the course of the last decade. And we've continued to execute in a way that's been able to deliver in the top half of our guidance for the last 6 years in a row with 6.5% EPS growth, even during disruption. Now I mentioned earlier I know that there's a lot of disruption in the world today as it relates to what's going on with the economy. We've been able to have this steady predictable growth in earnings per share utilizing all of the other aspects that I mentioned in our track record during COVID, during Laura, Delta, Zeta and Ida without missing a beat in the top half of our ranges. We anticipate all of this will contribute to our ability to deliver for you the 6% to 8% growth that we're talking about today based on those customer needs, those customer desires and the investment profile that we have to meet their needs. So as I said, Entergy is a compelling investment. Unfortunately, for us, but fortunately for you, we're actually at a pretty affordable price right now vis-a-vis the rest of the sector. Given the opportunity set that we have, given the fact that we intend to execute on that opportunity set, we would not anticipate that this discount to the market exists for very long. That's what we're going to talk to you about today. So that's the high level of what we're going to do. I'm going to let the team get into details. Rod is going to come up here in a minute. He's going to talk to you about those customers. He's going to tell you what they're demanding, how we're going to meet those needs and the resiliency in the clean energy space and what's driving them. But we're not going to stop there with the high level. Phillip May, the CEO of Entergy Louisiana and Laura Landreaux, the CEO of Entergy Arkansas, our 2 largest jurisdictions, are going to lead a discussion with 2 of our most valued customers, and they're going to talk to you about how all of this manifests itself on the ground. And the customers are going to tell you themselves why they're investing in growth, why they're investing with us and how we're contributing to their clean energy future. Paul Hinnenkamp is going to come up here and talk to you about execution. How do we take our world-class construction management capabilities that we've shown in power generation and transmission and translate that into resilience and into our renewable footprint as we develop that over the course of the next couple of decades. And then Drew is going to tie it all together, and he's going to tell you how that results in quality financially, flexibility, quality balance sheet and the earnings per share growth that I just outlined for you before. And then we'll be ready to take what I know is probably a robust set of questions from all of you, and then we'll wrap it up with what we should always wrap things up with, there's a couple of drinks, which by the end of this week, maybe you'll need some, I don't know. But thank you all very, very much for being here. Look forward to the dialogue in the discussion. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rod.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Leo. It really is exciting to be here after 4 years. And Lord knows we have gone through quite a bit together. I get the privilege of doing a double-click on the 4 elements of our customer strategy and our growth story that Leo laid out for you. And let's go straight to it. The first piece of the story, the part that we're really excited about and certainly from talking to you, it's gotten your attention. We have a unique growth story in our industrial sector along the Gulf region. It was already robust before February 24. And since then, that turmoil that Leo made reference to, has only strengthened the highlight on the Gulf Coast, that Gulf region as a premier economic and energy hub. The second element, though, is that growth story actually fuels the opportunity for us to create resiliency for our customers, undergirding that growth. I'm sorry. I had -- the screen was blinking on. The third element also that we made reference to is that this resiliency also reduces the risk for this growth story as well. I'll end the same way Leo did. The conversation with our customers around affordability is the reason why we believe the story we have to tell is going to be well received by the regulators. And our ability to focus on those customer -- the customer priority is the way that we get to create and deliver value for you. Let's get straight to it. This is the numbers behind the chart that Leo laid out. So between now and 2026, we're reading out a 6% customer growth, 17 terawatt hours of load between 2022 and 2026. A couple of things that are important. The majority of this load is consistent with the growth story we've been telling you for the last 5 to 10 years. Nothing new about it. Our industrial customers are taking advantage of the structural competitive advantages of the Gulf region, the things that we've been talking about, commodity spreads, access to the ports. All of these things are fueling our point of view on the 17 terawatt hour growth story. What's a little bit different from how we've talked about it in the past, we've shared with you how we've upped our skill sets and our capacity in terms of customer engagement. What's different here, we can actually tie this growth story to actual projects that our customers have shared with us. There is a path from the conception of that idea into the final investment decision. Our operating company CEOs and our analytics team, we're actually -- we've actually backed to the back into this 17-hour terawatts growth story. So we're not going too far out on a limb in sharing the narrative with you. These are the names that you have heard before. They would not be surprising to you when we talk about our new and existing customer growth, names like Exxon, Methanex. Air Products. You'll hear from a couple of them today with Laura and Phillip's panel discussion with Sempra and U.S. Steel. Those are the names that are driving this growth story that make up this 6% run. We're also -- not just the basic growth, the new and expansion that we've talked to you about in the past. There's also an element of this growth story where these customers are taking advantage of their customers' demand for cleaner products that will also be part of what you'll hear about with Laura and with Phillip. But the primary drivers are the basics, that is the structural advantage of the Gulf Coast. And that's not speaking to how we view the longer view around these customers' opportunity to electrify and grow beyond that. So the strength, our confidence in this 5-year view is based upon traditional fundamental drivers that we've talked about in the past. The Gulf region remains an important economic and energy hub. Why? You heard me make reference to structural advantages. Those are the things that we have listed on the upper end of the slide. The bottom end, these emerging factors, speaks to the point that Leo was making. And I think it's a good point to raise it here. It's been a little bit awkward to talk about the geopolitical unrest. That sounds kind of agnostic as to what's really going on. That disruption, that unrest though, as a practical matter, creates a void, and I'll touch upon it in a few minutes, but it creates a void that our customers have told us they are duty-bound to seize on an opportunity, and it creates for us tailwinds for the growth story and from our point of view around why we're so bullish about our customers' prospects and our ability to meet their objectives, as Leo was making reference to. And so the disruption is really an opportunity for our customers, and our customers are taking advantage of the structural and emerging competitive advantage of the Gulf region. Here's the takeaway, though. While we recognize we're in a bit of tumult, our customers believe, and the evidence is supported for us, that if there is a recession or prolonged economic slowdown, it could very well -- if we're going back to that prior slide -- it could create some lumpiness in the timing of some of the projects. That is solely within the realm of possibility. But we still believe that, after the disruption is abated, our customers are still going to be, on a relative basis, advantaged relative to the rest of the world. And that growth story is going to show up and play out. And because our customers are interested in pulling forward as best they can, again, that's undergirding the confidence we have in that 6-year view that we shared with you before. So putting the attributes of the Gulf region in some context for why it is we're confident in the growth story. The Gulf competitive position, though, is only enhanced by what's happening in Russia. In the short time since February 24, we've seen investment proposals actually being pulled forward as a result of what's happened. We're seeing it predominantly early on in the LNG space. I'm expecting that Laura and Phillip will talk a little bit about that. We're also seeing heightened interest in green power for LNG-related products as well. But the repercussions go far beyond the LNG space. Russia's natural gas exports go beyond Europe, and they are the third largest exporter of coal in the world. Think about the opportunity that portends for our customers along the Gulf region in terms of fuel displacement. In just a few months, we've seen some announcements around blue ammonia facilities in the region. The short end of this is that we expect that we're going to continue to play a role in cleaning not just the United States, our industrial customer base, but the world. And our customers are poised to take advantage of that, not just for the 5-year period, but for the long term. And yes, beyond the growth story for our new and emerging customers, our customers are demanding cleaner and cleaner energy. Leo referenced it, but we have -- right now, it's approaching about 70% of what we consider to be our named larger industrial customers have declared decarbonization goals, whether that's through '30, 2040 and beyond. And the challenge for them which is why we are here talking about the opportunity for Entergy, we're the key for them to be able to do something about it to turn that strategy into action in the near term, and they're all fueling our growth. You'll hear from Sempra and U.S. Steel about the near term where they need to clean up right now in order to meet their customers' existing demand for cleaner products. That's here and now. That's not in the future. That's not dependent upon future drivers of growth. That's also why it is we're confident in that near-term growth story. And of course, we're -- there are a lot of factors that are improving economics on a sector-by-sector basis, but we do expect that the economics of the clean and electrification opportunities are going to improve over time. So beyond the next 5 years, we do expect the growth to continue. Clean Energy for export will drive the plan, the growth beyond the 2025 time period, and it's just the beginning. And again, LNG is our proof of concept of that idea. And as Leo referenced, we do have an industrial base with a significant Scope 1 emissions opportunity that will have to be reduced. So electrification and carbon capture that we're showing in that 25 to 35 terawatt hours in that '31 time frame is a proxy for us for the convergence of improvements in technology and the economics of electrification. We expect it to play out. Again, it might appear lumpy, but our customers, and as a result, we are confident that that's where they are headed. The electrification opportunity is sizable. We have talked about this in a number of different ways in times past. Here's the deal, 5 to 10 terawatt hours in the current 10-year forecast. We're in the early innings. We're being as conservative as we can be just given where we are and there being so many catalysts, most of which we don't control, we're going to do our level best to influence. It's where we put the marker this early in the game. But we believe that even in that 2030 time frame that, that addressable market with the presence of any one of those drivers between now and 2030, that addressable market could be as large as 30 terawatt hours. We've taken a step back. And some of you were around at EDI, where we first began to talk about this when we open the aperture beyond the next 5 to 10 years and really take a step back. What we've done since that time, we've reinforced our point of view with our engagement of customers in addition to taking advantage of the macroeconomic observations that you all are making with us. We think that if we were to capture 2 or more of these catalysts that the electrification opportunity could be as large as 250 terawatt hours. This is not pie in the sky. This is a point of view that's consistent with the conversations we're having with customers about how this could play out, again, taking advantage of those structural and emerging competitive attributes of our Gulf region. When you see 250-terawatt hours as a potential long-term play, putting that in some context, that's more than twice the entirety of the load that Entergy serves today. Think about that in terms of why it is we're so confident that there's the opportunities there, and we have an opportunity through our customers to take -- to play a really significant role in it. So why are we so confident in the size of this market potential? Leo shared the slide in his opening. And he didn't put the numbers, although in times past when we've met with each of you we've talked a little bit about that. Our industrial customers' Scope 1 emissions is amongst the highest in the United States. And we have said before that if our industrial customer base, Entergy service territories, industrial customer base, was a state, we'd be the second largest state from an emission standpoint in the United States of America. And to reduce those emissions, they're going to need our help. It doesn't just happen. They're not going to be able to wait around for technology to show up and for technology to be efficient. They're going to need our help sooner rather than later. Sometimes it means retrofitting some of their existing processes. And candidly, some of the technology that really represents a sea change doesn't exist around resiliency. You've told that to us. Our customers have talked to us about that. And we're not standing pat. We're doing something about it. Keep in mind, we live here, too. Our sales growth, when we take a 50,000-foot view, our sales growth actually puts us in a position to fund part of that resiliency journey. Because it's not a new conversation for us. We've been part of this resilience and adaptation conversation in the gulf region for the better part of 2 decades. But where we land today, and we'll talk a little bit about the numbers here in a second. We're in a position where we're having to convince a diverse set of stakeholders that the dynamics have changed, that climate change is a conversation you get to have after your bills are paid. We didn't care whether our customers were on either end of the climate debate because the politics of this conversation have gotten in the way of us actually doing something about it as a community, as a state, as a country. Well, what's different now, and it's consistent with the point of view the company has had, we've told our customers and regulators and other stakeholders, "We don't care where you are on the climate spectrum." We found a language that resonates across the stakeholder scene, and that's the language of risk, the probability of events compared to the consequences when it actually hits. And in an awkward kind of way, that's beginning to make sense. The recency bias of us, that is the region experiencing 14 named storms over the course of 5 years, has caught the attention of all of our stakeholders who are trying to figure out, not debating whether or not we're dealing with more frequent and/or intense storms, but how do we pace a resiliency plan that achieves the objectives of reducing future storm costs, of reducing the customer interruptions and fueling the growth. We actually have to do something. And I can report to you that we have the attention of our stakeholders, and it's showing -- it will show up in the way that we talk about our capital plan in ways that we haven't in the times past. But Leo made a point that is really important. It's one thing to talk about the cost/benefit analysis of investing in resilience for the Gulf Coast for the benefit of Entergy's customers. We're stakeholders. We live here. But the point that we are making and the point that we actually have to make when we actually go to the regulatory process is we're making the case that this resiliency conversation is important not just to our customer base, but important to the rest of the United States of America. They all, we all, you all our stakeholders in resiliency in the Gulf Coast. And we're putting this -- we put this slide up to provide some context to make that very point, that resiliency is more than just transmission distribution and the like along our value chain. So when you hear and you read, and I know many of you will be looking for the regulatory filings that are to come, this is part of the backdrop beyond the numbers that we -- when we do the cost/benefit analysis for just the customers in Entergy's service territory. It's a much broader conversation. So when we're talking about our stakeholder engagement, I know many of your eyes are going to immediately go to the filings. When are you all are going to make your filings? What are you going to say in your filings? We thought it was important to make sure you understood the backdrop or how we are approaching this. And candidly, when you're out talking to our regulators, as many of you do, bring some of this conversation to the table, because you can actually play a role in helping us, as we like to say, being in the convincing business. We're showing on the left some of the things that we have done more public because there is both a public and a private aspect of our engagement strategy to get people aligned on the cost/benefit of not just resiliency. We've been doing resiliency for quite a while. Again, we're talking about accelerated resiliency. And Paul, Paul will go into what we mean from an operational perspective. But we do have to get permission support from our regulators to do the things that we actually believe are the right things to do for our stakeholders. So how does this resiliency conversation, how does the ESG conversation translate into our capital plan, right? These are all the traditional components of our capital strategy that you've heard before. And okay, what's different? We have a little blip in there for the accelerated resiliency of the $2.2 billion. The part that's different from how we've talked about our capital strategy with you in the past is we're actually sharing with you and to the public our intentions to ask the regulators for additional capital before we actually go to the regulators. And here's the reason why. Our customers are bought in on the resiliency play. Our customers are the ones who agree with you that we need to consider accelerating resiliency to derisk the -- all of the growth opportunities we have on the Gulf Coast. And again, I talk about the recency bias in a positive sense. We have everyone's attention. We intend to file for the $4 billion of incremental resiliency spend. And we're trusting that our customers are going to come along with us on the journey. And yes, we have been talking and foreshadowing with our regulators how we see the plan, but this is a proof of concept because this $4 billion, as you'll see when Paul comes up to talk about the entirety of the plan, this $4 billion is part of the $15 billion point of view. And we're not going to be shy about sharing with our stakeholders what we think and how we think about the cost/benefit. The negotiation with the regulators and the customers is going to be about the pacing. Because as all of you are realizing in real time, we're going into the regulatory arena during a tumultuous time for customers, for all of us. And how this hits the share of wallet that we'll talk about is important, but we want you to know that we're taking the need and the opportunity to derisk the story, that is the growth story for the Gulf region, by investing in resiliency series. But we will not get too far ahead of our regulators, and I'll simply ask on behalf of my operating company CEOs that you assist us in that regard once we're done with our Analyst Day today. So how do we actually get support for the plan? Leo talks about it. We talk about affordability. Again, it sounds sort of awkward for us to talk about affordability as though it's a thing or something new. It's part of our ethos. Affordability, reliability and sustainability informs every decision we've made around this company for quite some time. Well, that's nothing new. Well, why is it more important now than ever? Again, for the reasons we all have talked about, we recognize that our customers have come out of a 2-plus-year period of COVID. We're in the near-term dynamics of inflation and higher natural gas prices. And we're now talking about accelerating resiliency. And you all, like we have, we've equated the affordability conversation with the likelihood of support. That hasn't changed. The good news is, and I think -- I know Drew is going to talk with a little more discrete detail, we're showing up well on the O&M discipline front. There's a lot of work left still to do, but part of the case we're making to our customers as well as the regulators is Entergy is doing its part internally to manage bills, notwithstanding the challenges that we see in the marketplace with regard to gas prices and the like. Because the investments we're making, including our resiliency spend, all have an impact on reducing the bill impact for customers. And that 6% growth story, both for the next 5 years and for the period after, all has the impact of lowering bills. So the capital that we're purporting to spend on behalf of customers actually lowers the bill impact for customers over the planning period. So it's also a case for the Feds to be -- to come in and offer support. When they see us taking care of our business internally, we're not coming asking for support for things that we ought to be doing ourselves. We like the story we get to tell about where we're headed as a company, continuing to be focused on creating the headroom by our own actions in addition to seeking support from others. So whether it's seeking federal support or investing in technology or controlling our own O&M trajectory, we're taking steps to aid our customers in reducing the bill impact of the investments we're making. So this slide was designed to give you clarity on an OpCo-by-OpCo basis because we tend to talk to you about the some of the parts. I can tell you the operating company CEOs know that their regulatory environment is really a state-by-state view. And we want to be clear. We want to be transparent about how we see the bill impacts playing out over the short term and beyond. We have an expectation for the reasons I just alluded to that the customer bill on a relative basis will actually decrease over time. That does not, in any way, discount the near-term impacts of securitizations by hitting again the natural gas prices. Those are all real dynamics that we, along with our customers and other stakeholders, are going to manage our way through, but we have a story to tell about the benefits of the investments we make today paying off for customers in the long run. So ending where I began, the customer story, the value proposition for Entergy that makes us different, begins with the growth story in the industrial sector. Our ability to provide clean solutions for our customers both in the short term as we're -- as technology is kind of catching up with our aspirations as well as with a long view about the ability for us to continue to grow given the structural and emerging attributes of the Gulf region provide a really strong story for Entergy. And our focus on derisking this story by resilience. Our resilient spin is answering the bell for you and our customers and other stakeholders and keeping true to who we are around affordability. That's how we actually get our business done in the regulatory arena. We are excited about the opportunity. We're open-eyed about the challenges we have to face, but I can't tell you that there's a better team for us to execute than the one that we have on this Entergy team. And I hope that you'll buy -- literally, you'll buy the story because we're all in. And so for us, the future in so many ways is right now. I do understand that we're supposed to take a break between now and the panel, but we do look forward to -- I look forward to your questions during the Q&A, but you got to hear what's coming next with Laura and Phillip and our customers. Paul, Drew and then with Leo to close. Thanks for your time. [Break]

Good afternoon. I'm Laura Landreaux, President and CEO of Entergy Arkansas.

And I'm Phillip May, President and CEO of Entergy Louisiana.

And with me today is Rich Fruehauf. He's the Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer and Senior Vice President for United States Steel Corporation. Rich is responsible for creating and driving the strategy and sustainability priorities for U.S. Steel to achieve their profitable growth.

We also have Dan Brouillette, who is the President of Sempra Infrastructure. Now Dan has very interesting resume, which includes serving as the Secretary of Department of Energy and also very interesting being a tank commander in the U.S. Army.

Before the break, you heard from Rod about the significant industrial key dimensions of reliability, resilience and sustainability while keeping affordability top of mind. There's no greater example of that than the 2 customers we have here today.

Yes. So what we're going to do today is we're going to get the opinions and the perspectives of our customers. What are they trying to achieve? Why are they trying to achieve that? And why are they choosing Entergy to partner with?

We're going to start with U.S. Steel and Rich. U.S. Steel just announced a $3 billion mini-mill project to be located next to its existing Big River Steel facility in Osceola, Arkansas. This facility and expansion will be 550 megawatts, bringing with it 900 jobs and is expected to be online in 2024. This has been called the most advanced steelmaking facility in North America, and the 2 facilities combined will be capable of producing 6.3 million tons of raw steel. Rich, can you start by giving us an overview of United States Steel?

Sure, Laura. Happy to do that. Hopefully, everybody heard of us before. This is the company that Andrew Carnegie sold his steel company to JPMorgan, and it was formed in 1901. We were the first $1 billion enterprise, the first company with a code of conduct, the first company with an external auditor, PwC, which is still our auditor 120-some years later, and the company that coined the phrase safety first. But today, we've been undergoing a transformation to create what we call our Best For All strategy. So we came off of 2021 with a record year. Safety, 0.06 OSHA days away from work, which is industry-leading. We have -- we had about $5.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA last year. I think our free cash flow was about $3.2 billion. We are today about a 22 million net ton raw steel producer. We also produce roughly the same amount of iron ore from our Minnesota mines. And we have 4 segments: our North American flat-rolled business, which is our facilities in Gary, Indiana, here in Pittsburgh, Granite City, Illinois, our USSK, our European segment in Slovakia; and we have a tubular business that makes oil country tubular goods headquartered in Houston. And then I think the segment we're going to talk a lot about today, our new mini-mill segment, which is the 2 facilities you referred to, Laura, the Big River Steel site in Osceola plus the expansion that you and Leo were kind enough to help us break ground on back in February. So we will in that so-called mini-mill segment have about 6.3 million tons of steelmaking by 2024.

Well, given that, we are excited that you continued to do business in Arkansas with us and more than doubled their footprint and economic impact on our state. So Rich, can you now describe for us the market conditions that are driving this investment and why you chose to locate in Entergy Arkansas service territory?

Sure, sure. Absolutely. Well, U.S. Steel has been around, as I said, for a long time. We've helped build things like the Oakland Bay Bridge, the UN Building in New York, the Disney Polynesian and contemporary hotels, but we're transforming this company so that we can be the steel company of the future. We call our strategy Best for All. And really, what we're doing is changing the way we make steel, getting away from the blast furnaces with the high-carbon CO2, greenhouse gas emissions intensity that we used to use in the last century and moving toward electric arc furnaces. And we started that transition when we acquired Big River Steel in 2021, which, as you know, was an existing facility there in Osceola and Mississippi County, Arkansas. And it's really spurred us to go further and focus on reducing our carbon footprint. That's where the customers are going. It's where the investors are going. It's where everyone is moving. And so we're taking our existing technologies, our advanced high-strength steels that we use to lightweight vehicles that we make at our Gary facility and some of our other integrated facilities, and we're moving those and figuring out how to make them at Big River. We're making a lot of the other products, too, that will be needed for this climate transition for solar panels, for wind towers. And since we acquired Big River in 2021, we've already announced an incremental $4 billion of investment, including the second mini-mill you mentioned, but also a nongrain-oriented steel line. That will make the kinds of steels needed for electric motors that go into electric vehicles. And so as we think about the future, it really is transitioning how we make steel because steel is critical to this energy transition to a sustainable world. But we've also seen the reshoring of manufacturing into the U.S. We do have a footprint in Europe. But really, most of our production is here in the U.S. We can say we mine, melt and manufacture steel in the U.S., whether it's the iron ore that comes from our Minnesota mines to our blast furnaces in Gary and then to the mini-mill segment there in Arkansas. So we're progressing on that. We see ourselves as uniquely positioned to lead this reshoring of manufacturing. And so our investment there in Arkansas is really an expansion of the Big River complex because it's been so successful. And really, it only came about because of the great partnerships that were already in place with the State of Arkansas, with the Mississippi County, with the City of Osceola, the great talented workforce there, but also the partners like Entergy Arkansas that already had the electricity supplied to Big River. We were delighted to enter into additional supply agreements, the rail opportunities there with being in South, being on the Mississippi River, the logistics were great. So really, it was almost a no-brainer to expand in Osceola, and Entergy has been a great partner all along.

Thank you, Rich. And we've talked about the need for clean and renewable energy at that facility. Can you elaborate on why that's so important to U.S. Steel?

Yes, that's a great question. And without getting too deep into the steelmaking process, Laura, as I said, we're switching more and more of our production from blast furnaces, which are really carbon-intensive. That's where you take coal and you purify, turn it into coke, and use carbon to reduce the iron ore, extremely greenhouse gas-intensive process. So what we have at Big River and then at the second mini-mill are 2 existing electric arc furnaces and an incremental 2 more furnaces coming online in 2024. So those 4 electric arc furnaces take scrap steel. And with large quantities of electricity, I think over 1,000 megawatts, once all 4 of these electric arc furnaces are operational, remelt that scrap and turn it into steel, much lower carbon footprint in that steel production process. And that's really where the market is moving, not just the investors, but now our customers. We launched last year a brand of low-carbon-intensity steel we call verdeX. We're trying to deliver it for them. And Big River Steel is, again, cutting-edge. It was the first LEED-certified steel mill in the United States. It actually became the first steel mill in North America to be site-certified by Responsible Steel, which is a global standards body for clean steel, green steelmaking. So Big River Steel has really become kind of the focal point for our move to a more sustainable steelmaking process. And we're excited to be partnering with Entergy. And it's really critical, too. It's not just getting the electricity, but it's the source of power that Entergy can provide that's going to be critical. I should mention I used to work at Westinghouse, so I'm a fan of nuclear. And as I said, 1,000 megawatts, that's a whole nuclear reactor right there. Basically, that's an AP1000 reactor just at Big River or the consumption of electricity. So the noncarbon-emitting electricity power generation source that Entergy can provide, whether it's nuclear or renewables, it's going to be critical to us reducing our Scope 2 emissions and therefore being able to give our customers the low-carbon-intensity steels that they're demanding.

Thank you, and I was really glad to hear you talk about that partnership because I'm really proud of the partnership that Entergy Arkansas and Big River Steel have developed. It's long-standing. It's productive, and we've continued that partnership throughout the expansion. So Rich, would you mind sharing with us how we're continuing that partnership even further to help U.S. Steel meet its sustainability goals?

Sure, Laura. And it has been a great partnership. As I said, Entergy was already a great partner of Big River when we acquired it. And when we announced the expansion, the doubling of capacity in February, we worked long and hard with your team to figure out how we could continue that partnership with a long-term supply of electricity, but a supply of electricity that helps us meet our sustainability goals. We've pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050. We have a goal by 2030 to reduce our carbon intensity per ton of steel by 20% from a 2018 baseline. These electric arc furnaces don't give off a lot of CO2 in the process. So really, from a Scope 2 perspective, it's really about getting renewables that Entergy is working on supplying or nuclear power to drive down that Scope 2. These electric arc furnaces, it's maybe 25%, 30% of the amount of greenhouse gases per ton of steel versus the integrated blast furnace route. So your team has been great working with us not just to supply the electricity for the expansion, but to find the renewable sources and the nuclear to drive down the Scope 2 emissions that we will have to calculate as we try to get our greenhouse gas goals met. And of course, we've worked with your team as well on other sustainability communities where it works. We're partnering with you to invest in the communities in Mississippi County, in Osceola and make sure that we're good partners, business partners for those communities that we're happy to be part of.

Thank you, Rich, and thank you for your willingness to share your perspective with us here today. There's a lot to be excited about with U.S. Steel. And now we're going to hear from Phillip and Dan.

Thank you, Laura. It's a great story. It's a familiar story, one of the stories that we're hearing from many of our customers. Rod, you described the Gulf Coast as the premier economic and energy hub for the world. And we're increasingly seeing interest in growth in the Gulf Coast area due to those low energy costs, the skilled workforce, a world-class infrastructure for basically feedstock coming in, offtake coming out with deepwater ports. Those are driving renewed interest. Now that has resulted in growth over the last decade. What we're now seeing is a focus from our industrial customers on decarbonization. That creates 2 new advantages for the Gulf Coast, which include low and no carbon energy, along with subsurface geologic formations that allow for the storage or the sequestration of CO2 and the storage of hydrogen as an emerging source of a fuel. So with that, a great example of what we see along the Gulf Coast is Sempra Infrastructure's Cameron LNG. Now Cameron LNG operates a 3-train 12 million ton per annum LNG export facility in Hackberry, Louisiana. That's a $10 billion project in that peak construction, 10,000 workers. So an enormous economic impact on that region. They're also working on development on Train 4, which is a 6.75 million ton per annum train with electric drives. And continuing to work on development Port Arthur for 13.5 million ton per annum LNG export facility. So a lot of activity going on in our region with Sempra. So Dan, why don't you give us a quick overview of Sempra Infrastructure?

Great. Thanks, Phillip, and thanks for having me today. I look forward to our conversation. For those who are not familiar with Sempra Infrastructure, it's a subsidiary that's owned primarily by Sempra Energy, which is based in San Diego, California. We're also partially owned 20% by KKR private equity firm and ADIA the United Arab Emirates Sovereign Fund. So we have great partnerships with our owners. But our role within Sempra Energy is to develop these LNG export facilities as well as some of our renewable facilities down in Mexico and in parts of Texas as well as California. As you just mentioned, Cameron LNG is one of our flagship projects. Based in Louisiana, we currently have 3 trains of LNG that are fully operational. We are expanding that facility. As you mentioned, we're going to create a train 4, which is going to be driven by electric drives. And our reason for doing that as was just discussed by Rich and his team at U.S. Steel, is that we want to lower our emissions to the extent that we can with our facility, but we also recognize that that's only part of our goal here. The part of -- the liquefaction part of the process, I should say, is a very small part of the value chain of liquefied natural gas, and reducing those emissions is clearly important, but it won't solve all of the issues that we face today. So as we look around, we look for partners like Entergy, who have very concrete and very aggressive climate goals as well as low-carbon goals. And what we saw in you as a partner was that plan, and it's very, very attractive to us. So we want to partner with you to help you build out the grid so that it becomes greener. Because at the end of the process, when we put those molecules into the marketplace, our partners are in places like Europe and Japan, they want the greenest molecules possible for this natural gas. And we're excited about our partnership with Entergy, and we look forward to the work that we're going to do together.

Thank you, Dan. And I'd like you to take a minute and just kind of describe some of the market conditions you're seeing that's driving this investment in the first place. And the additional and incremental investments you're going to make and why the Gulf Coast and why an Entergy service area?

Well, as we all know, I mean, we're all watching the news, and the unfortunate events that are happening now in Ukraine and Russia are creating an enormous amount of energy pressure all throughout Europe and perhaps even the rest of the world. Asia is beginning to feel some of the secondary effects of the tightness in the natural gas marketplace today. So while that is unfortunate and we all lend our thoughts and prayers to the good people of Ukraine and hope that this unfortunate war and ruthless war ends very soon, it does create an enormous opportunity for American energy producers in Louisiana and Texas. And we are uniquely positioned to not only provide the gas, but to provide the technology that they will need over the course of the next 10 to 20 years, not only to meet their energy needs, but to meet their environmental needs as well. And at Sempra Infrastructure in the Gulf Coast, as you mentioned earlier, Cameron LNG, 3 trains, we're going to expand it to 4. We have capacity to go to 5 trains, which will make it one of the largest export, LNG export facilities in the world. We're also looking very closely at Port Arthur because of the amount of interest that we're receiving from European utilities for natural gas. We're going to make some pretty big announcements there as well over the course of the next few months, and we may expand that facility from 13 million tons per annum. We could go as high as 26 million tons. We could double the size of that facility in Texas. So again, Entergy is a very important partner to us, not only in Louisiana, but Texas as well. And it creates an enormous amount of economic opportunity for us.

Well, thank you, Dan. And you touched on this a little bit, but how does what we see going on in Europe right now? How is that driving the timing and the need for these projects at this time? We also -- I know we're dealing with some turmoil in the markets, how is that affecting these decisions?

Well, it's pushing the decisions closer to reality. So things like FID decisions are being moved further closer into the calendar. So we're going to make some big decisions here very, very shortly in Sempra Infrastructure. And as we have all read about in the papers, I mean, other folks are doing the same thing. There are some really good companies and really good competitors, if you will, in this space, and they're all moving very aggressively. But the economic activity here cannot be overstated. It's just been enormous over the course of the last 3 to 4 to 5 months.

Well, great. And listen, the other interesting thing about the upcoming project, train floor at Cameron LNG is you plan on using an electric drive, and that's sort of unique coupled with the prospect of renewable energy. What's driving that?

Well, very simply, Phillip, I mean, what's driving that is that, one, we can take care of carbon emissions from our facility. We can reduce the carbon emissions from that facility by obviously moving to an electric drive and not using natural gas to drive those turbines. That one reduces our emissions. But two, candidly, it reduces the amount of gas that we're using and makes it available for export as well around the world. So it's the right economic decision for us to make as well as the right environmental decision for us to make. And when we partner with a company like yours, like Entergy, we can be assured that we're going to get even greener molecules coming off the grid. Our goal here is not simply to shift our emissions from our facility at Cameron LNG onto the grid. Our goal is to work with you to also expand your ability to bring green molecules and be that nuclear or be that renewable technologies. We want to work with you to do exactly that.

Well, that's great, Dan. And the -- I mentioned that Cameron LNG came online and was fully operational in August of '20. That's the same month that Southwest Louisiana was struck by the second strongest storm ever to strike Louisiana and Hurricane Laura. Now we closely coordinated with your team throughout. We've made additional investments into 2 feeds that serve your facility. And in fact, we're now adding a third more robust feed for that facility to improve the reliability, improve the resiliency from future events. How do you value reduced outage, improved resiliency? How important is that to Sempra infrastructure?

Well, we're obviously big fans of resiliency, and it matters to us quite a bit. So to give you some context, Cameron LNG exported roughly 21 cargoes in March and April. Actually, a little bit more than that, roughly close to 30 cargoes of LNG in April and May of this year. I'm sorry I misspoke there. Each one of those cargoes in today's market is roughly $90 million. So if we are shutting down that facility for an extended period of time, the economic impact can run into the billions of dollars. So we're very, very concerned about the loss of energy to that facility. And that's why, again, working closely with you, working closely with you in the regulatory process to make the grid more resilient, to expand our capacity there, to expand our ability to bring electricity there, it's very, very important to us. I'm a resident of Louisiana. I was born and raised down in that area. I'm very comfortable, very understanding of what happens during the hurricane. And I must applaud you, your team, all of Entergy for the good work that you did following Laura, following Delta and really all of the hurricanes that we face down in that region. But we're very proud of our partnership with you, and we look forward to working with you even more closely.

Well, thank you, Dan, and that's really the last question. Anything else you want to add for the crowd here?

No. Only to thank you, Phillip, thank Leo, thank the whole team at Entergy. We are very, again, very proud of our partnership with you. And we look forward to many, many more years to come.

Well, thank you, Dan, and I appreciate the outstanding impact that you have on the local community in Southwest Louisiana. Thank you.

Thank you.

So what we heard from our customers is a need for resiliency, a need for renewable power, the need to decarbonize their processes. All of that is going to drive growth in the Gulf Coast and throughout our service territory. That means that growth will drive the need to invest in renewables and need to invest in resiliency, all of that is a great story for our customers, great story for our communities and, of course, for all of you as well. Laura?

Yes. I want to say again as well, and one of the other themes that I think we heard from both of the panelists was how important the partnership with Entergy is for them to meet their objectives. And we are hearing that from our customers across the enterprise. And we've got plans and projects under development today to meet those needs. And so as you've already heard today from Leo and from Rod, the future is on with the customer. So next, we'll hear from Paul Hinnenkamp, about our resiliency plan.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. That was really good. I hadn't heard those folks before, and the future certainly is on for all of us and renewables and resiliency front and center. We have made significant progress across both our renewable portfolio and our resilience program. In renewables, it just continues to grow. And we are now winning with our self-build proposals and projects in the renewable space. In resilience, we have made significant progress developing that program. I'm excited to talk to you about the progress that we've made. I'll lay out how we develop the portfolio that you've heard about. I'll talk about some of the outcomes that we will deliver with that and then how we will execute on that program. Turning to renewables. The graphic on the left is just a representation of our capacity today in 2021. And in the middle, we could see up to 7 gigawatts, nearly 7 gigawatts of renewables by 2026. That 7 gigawatts has 660 megawatts already in operation, 525 megawatts that are under construction, another 725 that are in front of regulators for approval, and then we have 1,500 megawatts that are under negotiation from previous RFPs, 2,500 of announced RFPs. And there's about another gigawatt, maybe 900 megawatts that has not yet been announced. So substantial progress directly tied to what we've heard this morning on electrification, decarbonization opportunities across the Gulf Coast. We expect that, that will only continue to grow. If you look out to 2031, we could see a doubling of that, 14 to 17 gigawatts of renewables by the end of 2031, driven by customer demand, driven by decarbonization, electrification opportunity. Our supply plan will support those customer objectives. We have made significant progress increasing our competitiveness in the solar space, leveraging some of the learnings that we've taken and taken a page or 2 out of the playbook of our very successful combined cycle program, learning from others and, frankly, the painful learnings that come from failure. We've gone from 0 self-build to the 2021 RFPs, we've won 1/3 of those. So 500 of the 1,500 megawatts out of 2021 self-build. I only expect that to continue to improve. Why is that? Because of the 3 reasons you see listed across the slides in front of you. We have a dedicated team focused on renewable development and renewable execution. That team is only getting better every day at what they do and figuring out how to be more and more competitive with our program. Our project development, we've become more aggressive in that space, acquiring assets, acquiring land, acquiring panels. We're, in fact, looking at how do we place manufacturing potentially in our service territory. We're looking across North America for the supply that will be needed for this type of build-out. And then across all of the options, we're looking at alternative financing structures and how can we drive down the cost of these projects to the benefit of our customers and to our stakeholders. And we're also looking very hard at the ongoing O&M costs to come with these projects and how we can become even more competitive. So very significant progress in this space and progress that I only expect to continue. Resilience. I know you have very many questions about that. We've heard about them over the last number of months. And as I said, I'm excited to lay out for you the portfolio, how we develop that portfolio, some of the outcomes and how we will go about executing on it. Rod and our customers laid out the importance that resilience plays in their growth opportunities and what we have to deliver for our customers and our communities. Storms are increasing in intensity and frequency. We have to reduce those future restoration costs. This program will do that. Our customers are relying on us more than ever, and we have to reduce the outages that occur post storms. This program will do that. And as you've just heard from a couple of our industrials, you heard from Rod, critically important that we have a resilient system for the growth that's coming in our service territory from our industrial. And this program will provide the resilience system that's necessary to support that growth. There are a couple of slides in the rest of my presentation that kind of pack a punch, if you will. And it doesn't look like much with 3 bullet points and a graphic off to the side. But rest assured, there is a massive amount of data, a massive amount of analytics, a massive amount of analysis and a massive amount of work that has gone behind what I'm about to share with you. In fact, we've had 20-plus people working on this for over 6 months. We benchmarked others, and we brought in a third-party firm with expertise. And we developed a storm impact model, and that storm impact model enabled us to look at our system against a varying set of storm futures over the next 50 years and determine what the likely expected storm damage would be, what the customer outage impact would be and what the expected cost and restoration time would be. In that model, we put all of our transmission and distribution assets in there, our poles, our structures. Not only did we input the number, which is 3.3 million distribution poles and about 158,000 transmission structures. We put in the age. We put in a 50-mile by 50-mile set of grids, if you will. And we took 49 discrete storms, you say 49, that's how do you put up with 49? Well, you can think tropical depression, tropical storm, you can think Cat 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And how does that storm hit each of those 50-mile by 50-mile sections? Is it coming from the left? Is it coming from the right? Very significant because the damage profile is significantly different depending on the direction that storm is coming from. Is it 25 miles away? Is it 50? Is it 100? Is it 150 miles or greater? We did that across the entire footprint, and we ran those storms across that footprint. And we were able, as a result of that, to determine what the likelihood of damage is, what the likely amount of storm impact is, what the customer outage impact is and what the cost to restore is. We then ran a Monte Carlo simulation of a 1,000 storm futures. So think about those 49 discrete storms and all the variations that could occur. And we were able to determine what the optimized portfolio that we think we should move forward for approval should be. It is based on a massive amount of analytics and data, and out of that came a portfolio of projects that are prioritized by the net customer benefit. And so quite a bit of detail and analysis behind that. And perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm going to zoom in on Baton Rouge, one of our major cities in Louisiana. And what I'm going to show you is an overlay of the distribution feeders. So the feeders of a distribution system are critically important to getting electricity to our customers. I'm not showing the transmission or the distribution laterals. But when we ran that model, and this is just for one storm out of all of that -- and we have this, of course, for every storm. But when we ran a storm on an as-is basis, no hardening. So all that work we did, we did on an as-is basis and on a hardening basis. And when we did that on an as-is basis, those feeders in red are the feeders that we would expect to be out of service as a result of that storm. With the hardening program that we are putting forward for approval, that is what we would expect. But we did that across every 50 by 50-mile section of our system, as I said, as is, no hardening and it was fully hardened and came up with, frankly, what we believe is a very solid portfolio that will deliver the outcomes, our customers and communities and that you expect. So that plan that we're putting forward is based on what we see as a potential future. The future that we looked at from a storm perspective was it's a weighted future, a weighted average future of what our 50-year history look like, plus what the last 5 years look like, a more intense, more frequent storm future. And if you look at this graphic on the blue line that you can see, that's the status quo if we made no investment, and the red line off to the left is if we made the investment that we proposed. And you could see that the benefit there against the varying storm futures is what we will move forward with. So for our portfolio, that $15 billion over 10 years, we expect the net benefit to be on the order of $40 billion to $45 billion. Obviously, if that storm future is more intense, the benefit is higher. If it's not as much of an intense storm future, the benefit is lower. But even in that case, you can see substantial customer benefits through reduced costs, reduced outages for that investment. The $15 billion is largely distribution. That's not a surprise to us. That is the part of our system that needs the most hardening and the most work. So what will we get for this investment? What will the customers get as a result of the $15 billion over 10 years. You can see the proposed approach of what will be in our plan by year. And you can see the numbers pretty significant. 32,000 line miles hardened, 493,000 distribution poles hardened, and you can see the numbers for transmission. But it's not really about the poles and the structures and it's not about the lines, it's about the impact that it will have for our customers and our communities. If you think about Baton Rouge in New Orleans, with this program, 75% of the distribution feeders will be hardened. That is a significant benefit to those communities and to those customers. If you look at from an industrial perspective and our industrial customers, we have 60 nationally critical infrastructure industries. When we're done with the program, they will all have hardened supplies to their facilities. We will, with this program, deliver the outcomes that Rod has laid out and others have expected of us for our industrial customers. And it will provide the confidence they need to invest in the Gulf Coast. If we narrow it down to just the Gulf Coast and the risk that, that represents from a storm perspective as well as the opportunity that represents from a growth perspective, this program will have a meaningful reduction in the risk in that area. Over the 10-year program, we expect to see a 55% reduction in both storm cost and duration. We expect to see pretty significant benefit with this program in the early years of that. Within the first 4.5 years, you can see the impact that we will have. In that area, we look at and we've laid out design criteria as you move from the coast up to about the I-10, I-12 corridor, the design criteria is that those assets for transmission and distribution should meet 150-mile an hour wind standard. And you move up a little further, 140. And then up around the I-10, 12 corridor, dependent on where, at the 125 mile per hour range. When we're done, all the distribution feeders across that coast in those sections will be hardened, 70% of those will be hardened. And when we're done with the program, the transmission along all of those areas will be about 60% hardened. Significant benefit to all of our customers and communities in those areas. Now you may say, "Hey, that's great, Paul. You do all that. That really sounds pretty good, and it would reduce the risk that Entergy faces and would produce the benefits for your customers. But how are you going to go about doing that?" This is another one of those slides with a lot behind it, a lot of work behind it, 3 points and some logos for a number of companies. But what's behind that? We have already done a lot of development work. We have met with and benchmarked other utilities. One of you, I heard say, you should know the plans of Florida Power & Light, like the back of your hand. Well, I don't quite know them yet like the back of our hand, but we're pretty damn close. The benchmarking we've done with them, other Florida utilities, the learnings that we've gotten from our programs have all been put into the work that we've done to put our execution strategy together. We've done substantial engagement, had substantial engagement with these firms that you see listed. They are the likely EPC partners that we will go forward with. We have not only had meetings with their working team level but at the executive level. The tops of every one of those companies, I and the leadership team that's responsible for this program have met with already. Now some may say, well, it's pretty early, Paul, should you really be doing this? You don't even have approval yet. And I say absolutely because it's tied to the disciplined rigor and structure that we follow when we execute such a large portfolio. It's all tied to the front-end loading that is necessary to ensure that when you step to execution, you step to execution successfully and that you execute with excellence. So a significant amount of work already been laid out. And as I say, the execution strategy and plans are pretty well developed. Not that they're finalized, obviously, we don't have approval yet. Rod is going to help us get that with his OpCo team and with the support of other stakeholders, but the team has already made significant progress in this space. I talked to you in 2018, and I talked about excellence in execution. And I talked about the team of people that went about executing our portfolio of projects. I talked about the discipline we have, the process, the partner approach, the people approach that we use. This team since then has only gotten stronger and has only gotten better. I say that because of the results that they have delivered. If you look at our combined cycle portfolio, several billion-dollar projects delivered safely on time and on schedule despite COVID, despite a bankrupt EPC partner and despite the myriad of issues that come with any large project and large program. Not only did we deliver there, The team delivered across transmission portfolio. The numbers you see speak for themselves. When Leo talks about world-class results, that's world-class results in my book. Those results don't just happen, though. They happened because of the discipline that the team has and the discipline that we use to follow our process partners and people approach. Those results happen because of strong leadership. Those results happen because of leaders that are now responsible for the resilience program. Those leaders have done the work already, as I laid out previously, with some of those EPC firms, some of the manufacturing firms that we've engaged with. And we will approach this program just like we've done any of our other programs. And we are moving forward with the discipline, the rigor and the structure to establish the right process, to get the right front-end loading work done, to get the right development work done, to onboard the right partners and have the right leaders leading that whole program. We have the leaders in place. They're strong leaders, and they're leaders that like the GSD, as I like to say. We have engaged with those EPC partners and the manufacturing, several manufacturing firms and companies to lay out where are the likely constraints and how can we go about executing this. Is the labor going to be there? How do we ensure we have the right labor? How do we ensure we have the right resources, the parts, the materials? Quite a bit of detail already going into that. We have a pretty good idea of what that will look like in the coming years. There are constraints. If you look at poles, for example, poles across distribution, for distribution across the industry are a potential constraint. We met with executives at Valmont, very key partner of ours across transmission and distribution, visited one of their concrete manufacturing facilities where they manufacturer and make concrete poles for distribution. As a result of our partnership with them over a long time and as a result of engagement at the right level, we established an MOU with them to secure the necessary capacity to support our needs for this program. We've also taken the step of the hardware that's required. Paul doesn't do much good without the hardware -- all the hardware that's going to be required, we're close to negotiation of an MOU to secure that additional capacity that's needed. So as I say, a significant amount of work been done already that helps inform our plan. You may say, "Okay, Paul, that's great. Transmission. Generation. This is distribution. This is $13 billion of distribution. Does all that apply to distribution? And can you go execute on the distribution portfolio of this magnitude?" And I would tell you, yes, we can. And yes, we will. I tell you that because of a number of things. One, we've taken that strong leadership in transmission, and we have moved some of that to distribution over the last several years, and we've built up the capability and capacity in that group. Two, we combined recently the transmission and distribution capital projects group. So that's all under one leader. And we have a dedicated resilience group. That group reports into that same leader. And that proven track record of world-class cost and schedule performance is what we expect and we'll deliver for this program. It's what those leaders expect and demand. It's what those people expect and demand. You see we got this at the top of the screen, and some of you may remember I put that out in 2018. So we got this as not some slogan that I use, and it's not something about Paul Hinnenkamp. Frankly, it's about the team. It's about the team of men and women that go about doing what they do. It's about those that execute these projects and deliver the world-class results. They take great pride in saying, "We got this." They're the ones that put it on their sleeves. They are the ones that put it on their presentations. They're the ones that tell us as leaders of the company that we got this. So it's not Paul, and it's not a slogan. It's who these people are. I'm only to stand here -- able to stand up here and say that because of what they do, because of what they deliver, because of who they are and how they go about doing what they do. The men and women that have delivered the excellence in our other programs will go after this program, and I'm confident we'll deliver the same type of results. It is what they do. It is who they are. They just go GSD and execute with excellence and deliver the outcomes that we, our customers, our communities and you expect. So thank you for your time. I appreciate it, and we're off to Drew.

All right. Good afternoon. Now we're on the third leg before the next break. So try to bring the energy level up a little bit. You've heard everybody say as they've come up here today that the future is on. And Rod talked about the future's on because the customers are telling us today what they want us to invest in, in order to meet their needs in the future. And then you heard from the customers themselves with Laura and Phillip talk about the same things. And then you just heard Paul talk about how we're going to execute on those investments. And as he left the stage, he said, "We've got this." So I'm going to talk about how, from a financial perspective, we are a high-quality utility today. And that starts with high-quality customers that Rod talked about, high-quality visibility in our investment plan, also high-quality tools that we have to manage cost and risk on behalf of our customers. And then finally, high-quality earnings, growth and predictability. All right. So we're ready. We'll start at the top line. That's where Rod started as well. He talked about the 6% growth rate that we see for our industrial customers. And that comes from the world-class customer base that we have, the competitive advantages that we have for our customers, things like access to deepwater ports along the Gulf of Mexico, access to the Mississippi River, available and talented workforce, supportive communities and abundant energy infrastructure to build upon, including Phillip added that the new pieces around the potential for hydrogen and carbon capture. And you add on to that the things that we bring to the table, some of the lowest rates in the country. some of the cleanest generation in the country. And then finally, you look at the fundamentals of the business, and you see the strong margins that are out there. The strong basis risk between the Gulf Coast and Europe or Asia on a number of different products, the low inventories that our customers are looking at right now, that they are manufacturing into. All those fundamentals look to be strong out into the future. And then add on today, you've got the global supply chains that are broken and the political instability that's out there. That's causing companies to look at the United States. And when they look at the United States, they look at the Gulf Coast and all the advantages that are there. Those are the ingredients for the organic growth that we see today, and we expect that those ingredients will be there for the long term and well out into the future. But that isn't the only source of opportunity that's available to us and our customers. You get to the end of this time frame and the outlook and you begin to see the opportunity associated with decarbonization and electrification. That is a significant, as Rod, called, a sizable opportunity that's available to us. And in order for all of us to deal with decarbonization, decarbonizing the economy. If you take a step back and think about how this is going to work is the economy without the utility sector. Electrification is the way this is going to happen. Even if there's hydrogen, even if there's carbon capture, that just means more electrification. And then, of course, Entergy, as Rod pointed out, our industrial customers have more decarbonization potential than any other utility, our industrial customers, and it's not close. So if you're an ESG dollar looking for a place to make an impact on rate of change for decarbonization, Entergy is the most important company in the most important sector in the most important country. There's no better place to put your dollar than Entergy. Of course, we have good visibility on our capital plan as well. That's not actually new. We've had good visibility for a long time now. What is different is the customer-driven and economically driven investments in resilience and renewables, the acceleration of those investments. And those are important to say, economic and customer-driven. Economic, because that gives us an opportunity to help manage those customer bills. And customer-driven means that we also have a partner as we go through the regulatory process and as we work through our communities. And you heard that from the customers themselves, their interest in these things. Of course, it also translates to the other side of the page, significant rate of change in our rate base. And as you see out there at the end, significant growth so that our balance sheet would have $45 billion of rate base out there by 2026. One way to manage cost and risk for us is through O&M, operations and maintenance expense. We've talked about that quite a bit in the past. A lot of it has been intra-year, what we call flex managing to whatever environment that we see at the current time. Sometimes we're moving costs up, sometimes we're moving costs down, and we're adjusting as we go along. But to manage costs over a long period of time, you have to do something different. You have to really affect culture change. And so we have been investing heavily, and you've heard from us about this, in continuous improvement, investing in our employees to make sure that they are engaged, that they have the skills necessary to do this. If they have the tools available to them in order to drive improvement on an ongoing basis. Part of this managing cost, of course, is the big items, right? But that's not what this is really about. Big things that you all would see as investors that would move costs once, and you could see that -- or mitigate a big risk all at once, and you could see that. That's important, and we've done some of that, and we will continue to work on that. But in order to manage cost and risk on an ongoing basis, you have to do it with the culture. You have to get to the thousands of individual decisions and individual investments that our employees make on an ongoing basis. And in that sense, it's more like compounding interest, right? It's the cumulative weight of all of those decisions adding up over time that give us the confidence that we can manage these costs and risks to these levels despite all of the inflation that we see today. Of course, before I leave this, I want to point out that when we talk about O&M, we are already high quality today. It doesn't really matter how you benchmark it. And in the left chart, we're showing all O&M, nonfuel O&M costs. On the right chart, we take out the generation portion for our operating companies. And you can see that we stack up really well. And that's important because that means that we're managing O&M on a long-term basis to benefit our customers, to lower their costs and create the headroom that's needed in order to make those investments so that they can achieve their outcomes in the future. Another place where we look for high quality is in the balance sheet. And you all have given us a lot of feedback, what a high-quality balance sheet means over the last several years. One place that we always look is what are the rating agencies say, Moody's and S&P? And both of them have recognized increasing quality in the risks of our business going forward in the last couple of years. So that's a place to start. Another measure of quality in your balance sheet is whether you can withstand an unplanned event without fear of a downgrade. And here, we're looking at cash flow to debt metrics for Moody's and S&P, and we have raised our expectations for what levels those will hit in the next several years. So Moody's were around 15%. And with S&P, we're around 16%. That's important because an unplanned event like what we've already disclosed around the ALJ position for SERI, the uncertain tax position. If that were to land at the FERC, that's about 25 to 30 basis points on an ongoing basis. That means that we still have some room in our credit metrics. Keeping the credit strong is really important for us. It's important because in a rising rate environment the cost of credit is getting much more expensive and the cost of a differential in the credit is getting more expensive. And that goes directly to our customers. And our customers are depending on us to manage those costs such that they can still achieve their outcomes. Of course, that's not the only thing our customers care about, they also care about storms. And when we think about storm risk, getting a high-quality balance sheet is a part of the story and managing to that outcome. Another piece of it is the size of our balance sheet. And I mentioned to you the $45 billion of rate base out in 2026. That size is importance from a balance sheet perspective, from a credit perspective to manage against storms. And then you heard Paul's discussion about all the investments that we need to make around resilience and the potential to mitigate costs and outages of our customers. You combine those things with the already strong liquidity that we have and the progressive regulatory mechanisms that our retail regulators have put into place, and we have a very high-quality way to manage storm risk out into the future. Of course, we are working through the markets right now to get our balance sheet to that spot. And you're all familiar that we are in an equity phase right now through 2024. We have a little over $300 million left to execute. We have made really good progress in that effort. And it's been through our at-the-market program, our ATM program. And that allows us to execute very quietly and very cost-effectively, which means also very shareholder-friendly. As we look out into the future, '25 and '26, and we see additional equity needs to meet our balance sheet requirements, those equity needs are relatively small compared to the size of our company at $45 billion of rate base. And also, they're small such that we can continue to use the at-the-market program, which means we can do it quietly and cost effectively and shareholder-friendly. In our capital plan, we have continued strong growth in our dividend with a payout ratio in the 60% to 65% range. And with Value differential exists between the private markets and the public markets, we're going to continue to evaluate that as a strategic alternative out in the future. All of that quality leads to quality in the earnings per share growth area. So that can expect to grow over the next several years, 5% to 7% earnings per share growth. And since that time, we've grown at 6.5%. Given the expectations that we have around sales and costs on behalf of our customers, we believe that the future earnings per share growth rate is probably more in the range of 6% to 8%. And as you look out beyond 2026, we see even more growth because the decarbonization and electrification potential starts to kick in out there, which couples with the organic growth that we expect to continue. And then on top of that, you have all of the investment that needs to be made to support those customers. Finally, when we think about earnings per share quality, we think about predictability. And as you could see over the last several years, we've been very predictable in the way that we've achieved our objectives that we set out for you all. And this has been despite COVID and storms and any other biblical plague that have befallen us in the last couple of years. We've still managed to get through that. Being able to achieve earnings outcomes predictably is true, and it's still there. So in the example that I gave around SERI, we would expect to continue to achieve these outcomes regardless of whether we funded an outcome like that with debt or equity. So we have a lot of confidence that we can continue to be predictable out in the future. So that's how we are driving high quality in our utility today from a financial perspective, high quality in our customers, our customer growth rate, high quality in the visibility of our investment portfolio, high quality in the tools that we use to manage cost and risk for our customers, including our continuous improvement programs, our balance sheet, our ability to access capital. And finally, high quality in our earnings, growth and predictability. With all of that information and the expectations around our growth -- expectations around our risks, we continue to believe and we have a high confidence in our ability to enhance the quality of our company going forward and exceed your expectations as owners. And with that, we are going to go -- thank you for your time, and we're going to take another break for the next 15 minutes, and then we're going to reset for Q&A. Thank you. [Break]

All right, folks. We're going to do a Q&A session. We're going to fill up here in a second as well. So it's fair game. We're going to do it as long as you all have questions. And Ed and I will go back and forth in the room.

It's Shar from Guggenheim. Drew, let me just ask one strategic question. I mean, obviously, the financing -- strategic financing question has been out there before in lieu of equity. I guess what's your trigger point, especially given the private market interest there is now? What are you waiting for? And then maybe just elaborate a little bit on what you're thinking -- what are some of those options?

Sure. Well, I'll talk a little bit about it. And then I'm sure Leo have the strategic element, I'm sure Leo will comment on as well. And that is a key piece of it. It's a strategic piece. But I think from an execution perspective, it's trying to align all the stakeholders in that process. As you know, in the regulatory jurisdictions, if we wanted to do something like a 20% operation OpCo sale, that would take regulatory approval. And so trying to think about how do you align those stakeholders is a critical piece of it. But it is something we continue to explore and because of the valuation differences that you mentioned.

And kind of like with the green tariffs, 17-terawatt hours of industrial growth, hedge against gas, is 14 to 17 gigawatts now the correct number? Or should we think about these targets as kind of an evolving process? And then just remind us, what construct do you assume for recovery of the build-out? Do you need new mechanisms to address the significant ramp-up in spend? Should we assume traditional filings, especially as we're thinking about own generation?

Okay. I'll start on that. There was a number of questions in there, and then maybe Rod or even Phillip and Laura can jump in on regulatory recovery mechanisms and everything. That's the resource plan we have now. Remember, we had one that was a lot different a while back. And the good news for us from a resource standpoint, and Paul can jump in on the technical aspects of this, I'm not used to having so much expertise at my fingertips. So if I answer something that I shouldn't answer, you guys just kick me. But that's the resource plan we have today. And the good news for us is, given the way our resource plan has developed over time and the needs of the reliability and affordability of the system, we've got a significant amount of new highly efficient gas-fired spinning mass generation on the system already. So we have a long runway of ability to add renewables and intermittent generation to the system and still have a reliable system. And so that's given us the flexibility to go from, is it 5,000 megawatts, is it 7,000, is it 14,000 to add additional of battery storage and other things that we'll do to the system. But the resource plan could change, certainly, if that industrial -- Rod put that industrial opportunity up there. And you probably noticed the little red dot. I think it was a red dot or orange dot, whatever it was that was -- this is how much we expect to get. It was a pretty small fraction of what that opportunity might be if electrification in all its forms starts to take off. Even some of the customers they talk to you today have designs on carbon capture and sequestration, and there's customers that are in our service territory that have announced green and blue hydrogen schemes and the like. So there's a lot out there to be done. So it's the right number for now. The fact of the matter is, if our customers demand more, we'll be looking to try and see what more we can do. But it's obviously grown significantly given what we've seen from a customer and standpoint. And then one of your other question was on the regulatory front, I think.

Yes.

Yes. And if you think about the need -- and underlying your question is the need for flexibility, should we have to ramp up renewable capability faster than we currently have in the sums, what tweaks -- because I'm going to use that word deliberately, what tweaks might Laura, Phillip and the other operating company CEOs need to make in order to facilitate the up-ramp? We may need more flexibility in our ability to as opposed to the current RFP process that may not meet the time frame that we need to ramp up to solve our customers' needs and outcomes. We would ask the -- for regulatory support to go out into the marketplace to build that capability up on a more ratable basis. That's a tweak. When we add the dynamic of resiliency spend depending upon how the yet to be determined negotiations go in the regulatory process, there may need to be adjustments to the existing RFPs and the mechanism outside of the RFPs that exist, for instance, in Louisiana and in Texas, where the lion's share of their early spend in resiliency is more likely to show up. And so the short answer is, given our ambitions I do believe there's an opportunity for us to think differently, and I'm using the word tweaks in terms of the regulatory mechanisms. So that's to be determined, again not getting ahead of the regulators, but a lot of that will depend upon their point of view around their support for the rate of resiliency spend. I think we have a little bit more flexibility within the generation space because we have existing G riders, if you will, in Louisiana and in Texas.

I just want to add because maybe Laura want to comment. The -- where the customer is in this equation matters. I know, Laura, you could talk a little bit about just the U.S. Steel experience with the specialty rate contract and where we're going with renewables and the filing you made around -- so there's a lot there, that when the customer is asking for something and they're going to create a $1,000 -- $100,000 a year job, I don't know if that matters, right?

It's a persuasive factor, right? Absolutely. But we have had a significant amount of success when we are coming to the regulator with the customer bringing to -- it's going to be customer demand-driven. And with that customer demand comes the support we will need at the regulator body.

If I could just add, regarding Louisiana. The way the process works currently, we filed for certification. There is a mechanism for adding additional capacity that allows that to go into rates on a timely basis. So there's a good regulatory mechanism for that. I think the timeliness is something that we need to continue to work on. And as you noted, the demand for the renewable energy that we're seeing along the Gulf Coast coupled with the economics of it currently and ongoing I think are great read.

Paul Fremont with Mizuho. I guess your plan for resilience calls for a significant amount of risk reduction. Have you looked at an alternate plan that would involve undergrounding? And how would that compare with respect to both risk reduction and are there technical obstacles to undergrounding your system?

Paul, do you want to?

Sure. We have looked at undergrounding. There is a small portion, 760 miles or so of underground. The next step that we will be taking is looking at the benefits from a -- more closely from a reliability and O&M perspective. And we think that, that may up the amount of undergrounding that we do. There are difficulties in the areas that we serve, some of those that maybe aren't the same elsewhere in terms of undergrounding if you think about New Orleans, if you think something about our urban area, it's very difficult in and around those areas to underground. So I'd say, yes, we expect that there will probably be more. I don't have a number yet and what that would be. And I think we have to finish that next step of the analytics on benefits from reliability, blue sky reliability benefits and O&M benefits, and it will likely increase in my estimation.

I know you guys are coordinating here. I want to come back to some of the perceived conservatism in the plan in two ways. One is you have this 5 to 10 terawatt hours of a 10-year view. But again, if I'm listening to the two customers you had up on the screen earlier, it seems like they might collectively just between the two of them, be above the top end of that 10-year forecast. I get apples and oranges but I just trying to reconcile what you built into the plan today vis-a-vis just even those two customers and what kind of latitude there is above it? Again, I'm just trying to reconcile the different slides here, if you will. It seems conservative in terms of an analog.

It is by design conservative, and the reason why we laid out the 5 to 15 and then the 30 within that time frame and then accompanying it with the catalyst. The 5 to 10 is in our line of sight, it's what we can see now. The difference between the 5 to 10 and the 30 is a function of those catalysts showing up in that time frame. Your observation is spot on. There's a reason why we didn't go from 5 to 15 straight to the 250. The conservatism is keeping us honest that we don't control. And as a result, we are not claiming and putting in the plan that opportunity. There's two dynamics, the availability of the addressable market and our availability to execute and when in that -- and all within the regulated construct. Those are all things that the reason why we put it out here was to show you what we're looking at. And it's adjunct to the first question around the link between the resource plan and supply plan and what happens if the demand is greater than you think. Internally, that's what we're -- Paul was talking about execution. That's why he went through the detail that he went through what happens if it's greater. It's a high-class problem to have. We're not claiming victory because there's an important set of stakeholders who have to agree to be on the journey with us. And we have to -- we're going to engage them right after you all go home.

Right. And Julien, the only thing I'd add is when -- if the customers start to expand in ways beyond or electrify in ways beyond and our resource plans and in our capital budgets and everything. But if somebody decides to add another train of LNG, we'll know about it in time. We might already know about it, actually, even before they get public with it because they're talking to Phillip about that and [indiscernible] about those things right now.

Or is it differently, it just doesn't seem like you're reflecting anything in your current forecast, above and beyond those two, maybe -- I don't know if that's true?

Well, notionally, when I talk about '26 and beyond, and as Drew alluded to, our point of view around the opportunity set, we're contemplating it. Are we pegging it to a specific project? No, but that's work to be done.

Just one more point of clarification. Just when you think about the cumulative impact on your customers, obviously, we're all very sensitive, and you guys are very aware of this. In your slides, you talk about like a baseline on '21 and '22. And I think you baseline saying off of 2021, a 3.5% CAGR over the period. That seems to reflect the entire uplift in the commodity curve that we've seen of late as best I understand, right? So if things actually deflate off these highs, you actually create some amount of headroom, and that's inclusive of resiliency as well, right?

If a modulation that you see in the customer rates out into the future. But you see in the front part, you see the gas impacts of today's prices as well as securitization. So that's not all in the rates in '21.

Right. But off that '21 base, you're fully loading everything and you're ending up with just the 3.5%.

We're fully loading everything. We don't have the extra $2 billion of resilience dollars in that sales or in that bill path. That's not -- if you're saying it, everything per se, that's not in there.

So that's the [indiscernible] $2 billion.

Sophie Karp, KeyBanc. I wanted to dig a little bit more into that same line of questioning that Julien just had. So with the TAM that you're showing growing from like threefold almost, right, over 10 years, that's significantly faster than the near-term loan growth and you're projecting for yourself. So my question is, is there a function of shape where it's really the TAM really picks up kind of like at the end of those 10 years at the end of the decade? Or something's going on with your market share that you expected to capture or you just being super conservative? Like how should we think about this discrepancy? Where you're thinking the TAM is going to triple, but you're only growing at like 3%?

Yes, I think it's more of a timing question. right? So that total addressable market that we think we'll get by the end of the decade in the 10 range is the market that -- I mean, there's, I guess, 10, there's the 30 that's sort of potentially out there that I think that's the conservative piece. But the rest of it we think is going to come out into the future. I think most of the goals are for getting to net zero or whatever are in the 2035, 2040, 2050 range. And that's where I think everything would expand into that total opportunity that's out there.

So potentially beyond kind of the near term 3%?

Yes. So we have the organic growth that's based on all the fundamentals of our industrial customers, and then you have this conversion opportunity around the electrification that, that as supposed to an embody. And that is -- we don't expect to get all of it. I mean there's going to be energy efficiency, there's going to be other things like people will use hydrogen or carbon capture. That will create, as I mentioned earlier, will create electrification in a different way. There'll still be electrification, though. And so that's what all of that is supposed to encompass, and we just don't expect it all to happen by the time we get to 2030.

And what do you think your share of that current addressable market is today?

Well, it's 100%.

I wasn't sure who you will define it.

As a [ vertically ] integrated regulator. Yes. I mean today, obviously, customers can still co-generate and it gives us the opportunity to continue to expand to meet those customer needs out in the future. And just trying to think through what is -- that's what Rod and Laura and Phillip were talking about how do we manage that with the customers and meet their expectations?

Cogeneration is a good example too of today, a customer may co-generate depending on the age of the facility that's producing power for them, that's probably typically, there are a bunch of trains with CTs that are not overly efficient that they have to run all the time, that creates a really high fuel cost and a high emissions profile. Now today, that -- it's not necessarily economic for them to stop co-generating and immediately take from us through a Green Tariff sort of thing because just because the [indiscernible]. But at some point in time, they're going to have a decarbonization objective that, that cogeneration facility is working against. And at some point in time, they're going to have to make a decision on the equipment change out anyway. And that's when they're going to open their door in the morning to go to work and Phillip would be on their doorstep, saying, okay, I'm back, now is the time. So the timing of that, when we start talking about, Julien's question about timing, what we can't control when somebody who's -- that's just one aspect that we can't control when somebody is going to take that co-generating facility out of service. And all of a sudden take grid power and buy a Green Tariff and accelerated renewable program. But we know that someday they'll have to do something with that.

And then more on the near term, I guess, maybe if you could clarify one of the footnotes on your slide deck says that $2.2 billion [ are now look ] to get approved within the existing mechanisms? Or is that something that wouldn't require the weeks we were talking about? Like how should we think about it?

Yes. Well, I'll tell you what. Phillip, that's -- at the end of the day, that will be a Phillip and [indiscernible] conversation, but it remains to be seen. Our point of view is, again, I used the word tweaks. We have the $2.2 billion in the plan. We're asking the regulators for the additional $4 billion, whether or not it requires a tweak will be a function of how the regulator responds to the pace of that spend and the negotiations. But Phillip?

Yes, just commenting on -- you looked at the profile of that investment, a significant amount of is the distribution, the distribution system. We have a current mechanism that is regulatorily efficient to recover that cost when we accelerate the spend for resilience, we likely will have to tweak that so that it's adequate enough for that additional investment.

Okay. And you're going to try to do it kind of like in the near term through 2026, so likely push it out a little bit further?

The current FRP mechanism, '22 is the last year of that. So we'll have an opportunity to propose a new mechanism.

So we do need to get the regulators to allow us to replace some existing equipment and still get that equipment into rates. So that's part of the difference between the $4 billion and the $2 billion as well.

[ Leslie Rich ] from JPMorgan. So in your CapEx plan, you have $2.3 billion allocated to renewables. How does that tie into the $4.5 million gigawatts of RFPs that are underway? Like what have you assumed that you actually win to put in rate base versus be third-party PPAs. Like you talked about you're getting more competitive and you're building up your internal in-house expertise. But how do you address your -- as we look at all that renewable build happening in your region, how do you think about your ability to win that?

I mean I'll address the assumptions and then Paul can talk about the competitiveness. But the assumption is that I think we're winning about half of those. And then we have an expectation around tax equity partnerships, which probably brings that contribution down a little bit more. So that's why you don't see a much larger number in there for the renewables piece. And then I'll let Paul talk about the competitiveness elements and how we expect to win our share.

We'd be going after all of whether that is actually the outcome even if we are competitive, if that's right with all the other decisions that have to be made and others will have to weigh in on that. But our objective with that team and with our approach is to be as economically competitive as any offering in the market.

Paul's objective is different than the assumption, just so Paul knows.

Clear on the objective with me, though.

Jonathan Arnold, Vertical Research. Quick one on the transmission component of the resiliency spend, the 1,700 miles, $2 billion. What sort of percentage of the higher voltage system does that address? Whether it's percentage, miles or how, just some way of calibrating.

Yes. I'd have to get a follow-up with you on the specific details on the breakdown between our $500 million and $230 million and below. We've done a lot of investment in the $500 and $230 million. There is a good bit of investment that will be done on the 69 kV breakdown between those -- in those levels.

Partly, the genesis of the question. I feel like your recent storms, at least what's been visible is a lot of major damage in the transmission system. And if you'd ask me coming in, what would I expect that split to be? I would have thought there might be more spend in transmission. I'm just curious, is that because you've done a lot of it already through recovery or some other?

If we look at the cost to recover from the storms, the vast majority of it is distribution, probably 80% or so. So it didn't surprise us from that regard that much of the investment is needed in the distribution system. The distribution system is not very hardened today. whereas the transmission system is, I believe, on the order of 40% or so, that's hard, if I remember my numbers correctly. So much of the investment in transmission, I do believe is tied to some of those lower voltage levels that we need to get after and which this plan will do. But when you think about the number of customers that are impacted from distribution in the system in our regard, we weren't surprised by it.

So we're 40% today, does the 10-year plan, where would that 40% shake hands?

For transmission about 60%.

Would get to from 40% to 60%?

Yeah.

And then any assumption in the plan on federal funding and secondarily, how would that play in? Would you just do -- would allow you to do more resiliency for the same dollars and quicker? Or how should we sort of think about that?

Yes. So in the financial plan, we're not assuming any federal dollars right now. And I think you answered the question appropriately, Jonathan. I think we would assume that, that would accelerate our investments to get to customers the benefits as quickly as possible.

Any other questions?

Can you give a little bit of color as to what's driving their motivation, specifically, is there any pre-bond initiatives that they have underway that they might be able to get lower financing costs to the extent that you're able to decarbonize their footprint? Or are there other commercial benefits that you could have anyway?

I'll make sure I understand your question. Are they -- can we see them doing anything visibly in the market to try to get ahead? Is that what you're asking?

Yes, they might be tied to their electric decarbonization footprint.

I don't know that we're seeing -- I don't know if there's -- I haven't seen any specific activity that our industrial customers have engaged in. Certainly, I mean, we could talk about -- I don't know, Phillip or Laura, if you all are aware of any specifics that our customers are going out into the capital markets to try and get ahead. But maybe talk about FID or something like that, that I haven't really seen.

No, I haven't seen industrial customers moving ahead on this. But I think the big driver behind this is margin. So you look -- when we saw the electrification coming out in the '27 and beyond. Part of that is because the margins are so attractive. Our customers are engaging aggressively and expanding in greenfield opportunities. That's being done on a clean basis. So those plants are designed to have lower carbon emissions to reduce their Scope 1 emissions as well as their Scope 2 emissions through renewable energy. So what you're seeing in the front end of that, a lot of that is driven around the opportunities due to the margins you see in the respective commodity markets.

And I'll add into that. Dan and Phillip has been trying to flag down Dan a lot. And Dan has been traveling in Europe quite a bit to try and shore up a bunch of LNG contracts. I mean it's just -- that's what they're responding to right now, I think, as Phillip said, those commodity spreads and the high margins that they're seeing right now is really driving a lot of the activity.

And then unrelated question, in terms of your longer-term EPS outlook, can you give a little color as to what you're seeing in terms of O&M cost pressures that embed those assumptions?

Yes. So on the O&M side, it's mostly in some of the -- actually, I would say there isn't been as much in the O&M space. Most of the pressure has been in the capital space, frankly. And in the O&M space, we've seen some in the labor area for folks that have alternatives to go out there and work for Amazon delivery services or something like that. And so we're watching that very closely. And then we've seen some pressure with interest rates, obviously, which is not O&M, but that's another area where we're seeing inflationary pressure. And then finally, again, not in O&M, but natural gas prices, of course, something that the customers see very quickly, and the teams have been working. I know Phillip and Laura have been working closely with retail regulators to think about how do you mitigate that from a customer bill perspective.

David Paz with Wolfe Research. Actually, just following up on that question, Drew. what -- and then while we're at it, just your pension, both the discount rate as well as your expected returns?

Okay. So I mean I think our inflation rate, we have near-term pressures, like I said, in the capital space. that we have worked into our capital plan. I don't have a percentage per se because it seems like almost every project is different and unique based on its timing and everything else. And then, of course, we do have the gas prices that are embedded in here. I think those are disclosed specifically around $8 or $9 through next spring, and then they start to fall off after that. And then trying to think, oh, in the discount rate around the pension, trying to remember the exact number. It's come up a little bit. I believe it's around 4% in terms of the discount rate and our return, I think those are kind of some of the key underlying assumptions there. Oh, interest rate. Yes. I'm trying to remember what the exact number is. It's around -- long-term debt around 5% that's what we have right now.

And then on SIRI, you mentioned the 25 to 30 basis point impact FFO to debt, but what -- maybe translate that for us into the potential EPS impact from the pending SIRI cases at FERC?

Yes. So the FFO to debt impact, so that's I think our disclosure around that is around $550 million. And the FFO to debt impact, and we've said this before, it's about 25 to 30 basis points. That assumes that we were to finance it all with debt. If we were to translate that to earnings per share at debt, it's in the $0.05 to $0.10 range. And if you were to use equity, it would be in the $0.15 range. So hopefully, that gives you some parameters around how to think about that.

Just with respect to the $2.2 billion of resilience spend, just super quickly on this, just with respect to the EPS CAGR, maybe it's more again, Drew sticking with you quickly. As you think about, does that put you in the upper end of the band since when you get that full $2.2 billion to? I mean clearly, you look at your range, you look at the impact of that. Just want to understand how that positions you? And again, especially considering the comments that you already made around having latitude with SIRI?

Yes, I would say maybe because it depends on how the regulatory process turns out more than -- I mean there's lag considerations because we -- there was -- there's a lot that goes on in terms of that extra spend is going to require extra capital, and it's going to be a lot of incremental lag. And so that would be one consideration. And then have the regulatory process, the tweaks that Rod and Laura and Phillip were talking about, all that has to factor in to determine whether or not that would be part of an earnings per share change, it's too early to say for sure.

I hear you. And actually, the subsequent related to that is, with regards to that, what are you assuming in terms of mechanism? I know that this is evolving, right? I'm cognizant of that, but like Texas or Louisiana, just what should we be assuming? And as that ramps up, we should see that lag kind of get accentuated at a certain point, if I'm hearing you right?

Yes. That's right. And -- but we're mindful of that and part of the conversation with the retail regulators is how do we manage that? And it's not really, to me, it's not about earnings per share question. It's more of a credit question and making sure that our credit stays strong as we ramp up towards all of this and make sure that balance sheet stays strong. I mean that's -- to me, that's the big part of the conversation with the retail regulators because we're investing to improve the resilience against storms to improve our credit going forward and give, oh, I mean it will be situation dependent. So the one that Phillip was talking about today, there are riders around a bit of forward test and year type stuff around transmission, but there are also alternatives like we did with automated meters where we can get something in ahead. So we've done that with gas LDC pipeline replacement as well. So there are multiple things out there that could facilitate that.

Any other questions?

Now, few more words, just because I want to keep you after class. Because what I want to do is I want to go back to where I started and talk about the fact that Entergy has all of the attributes of the premium multiple companies in the space although we don't trade at one. We've got growth in the business, organic growth, good growth that you heard from our customers. We've got a track record of executing. And again, I think it's important to realize, we've executed through some pretty drastic disruptions if you think about what COVID has done to the economy, if you think about what the storms that we faced have done. We've created a much more financial flexibility and we plan on, as Drew showed you to have a higher quality balance sheet going forward. And we've got a pretty good decarbonization story, and I would argue the best decarbonization story in the industry. As Drew and Rod both mentioned, decarbonization of the United States actually has to go through Entergy. It's a unique position that we have that nobody else has that over time could be able to create and even more robust growth pattern than what we've already shown you here today, given the opportunity set that's in front of us. We're already starting to see what that can do to the capital plan. If you look at our capital plan, through '26, we've got that $25 billion. But as we look at what might be needed to meet the needs that may or may not be conservative out through 2031, that could look like another $30 billion to $40 billion capital program at that point in time that be accompanied with actual sales growth. All of that brings me back to the place I wanted to start because I don't want you to leave without taking the one message that I want you to take away, and that is we're a pretty damn good investment opportunity right now. But if you look at the opportunities that we have in the future, they're even greater. And so I don't know what you're waiting for, but in any of that. With that, I can't thank you enough. This has been a real pleasure for us to actually get to do this in person with you again. Look forward to doing it again in the future. And as I said earlier, the most...