XCEL ENERGY INC Q3 FY2025 earnings call

• Xcel Energy continued commitment to customers, investors, and communities, delivering solid earnings of $1.24 per share in Q3 2025.
• Invested over $3 billion and $8 billion year-to-date in resilient and reliable energy infrastructure.
• Reached settlement with Marshall wildfire plaintiffs and accelerated wildfire risk reduction efforts.
• Introduced updated 5-year infrastructure investment plan to deliver 7,500 MW of zero-carbon renewables, 3,000 MW of natural gas-fired generation, almost 2,000 MW of energy storage, etc.
• Utilizing AI in business to bend cost curve, improve customer satisfaction, and operational outcomes, including using AI for distribution infrastructure inspection and wildfire risk modeling.
• Steel For Fuel program saved customers nearly $6 billion through 2025, and One Xcel Energy Way Continuous Improvement Program realized over $1 billion in cumulative savings since 2020.

In the third quarter of 2025, Xcel Energy recorded ongoing earnings of $1.24 per share. Weather-normalized and leap year adjusted electric sales increased 2.5% through the third quarter. O&M expenses increased $37 million relative to 2024, largely driven by a $25 million increase in health and benefit costs. For full year 2025, electric sales are forecasted to grow 3%, and O&M expenses are expected to increase 5%.

• Reaffirmed 2025 ongoing earnings guidance range of $3.75 to $3.85 per share.
• Initiated 2026 earnings guidance range of $4.04 to $4.16 per share, reflecting midpoint 8% growth from 2025 midpoint.
• Updated long-term EPS growth objective to 6 to 8-plus percent with expectation to deliver 9% growth on average through 2030.
• Maintaining dividend growth objective of 4% to 6% with expectation to be at low end of range.
• $60 billion 5-year capital expenditure forecast with annualized rate base growth of approximately 11%.

• Wildfire risks, as evidenced by the $290 million charge related to the Marshall wildfire settlement and ongoing efforts to mitigate wildfire risk.
• Supply chain risks related to equipment availability for infrastructure projects, including turbines, transformers, and labor for EPC firms.
• Regulatory risks, as rate cases and regulatory proceedings can impact earnings and capital plans.

Q: Just wanted to be clear, '26 at the midpoint, you did about 8%, and I hear you on the 9% through 2030. Does that start beyond '26? Or is that how you're kind of viewing this year?

A: Nick, I'll take that. No, that includes 2026, so 9% over the next 5 years, inclusive of '26 guidance. So that 9% would be based off the midpoint of this year, so $380 million.

Q: So I guess first on just kind of the profile of the growth rate or growth. When you look at the CapEx plan and the rate base growth, it's very heavily front-end loaded and then CapEx actually falls right now, '29, '30, a decent amount. A lot of the other companies are kind of the opposite, where it's lower now, and it's like ramping up. Could you maybe just kind of talk to that? And is a lot of that just -- we just don't know some of these RFPs and other factors out in '29, '30.

A: Yes, Steve, I can take that. That one, I think you're exactly right in terms of -- we're always conservative of what we put in capital plan and our SPS portfolio [indiscernible] process in there for the projects that were approved by our Minnesota Commission in Q1 of this year. But it really gets to in that '29 and '30, we launched RFPs with Colorado SPS that we're pretty early in the process. And that sits in the kind of our additional pipeline bucket that is as we move through that process kind of into next year and even beyond that we expect there will be opportunities to fill in there, both generation to serve load growth for our customers, but also transmission that we expect to see out of SPP in the near term here. The next tranche of SPP should be a Q4 event that we get visibility in, but then also longer term on MISO Tranche 2.