Ameren Corporation (NYSE:AEE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

I mean, the $2.4 billion of incremental capital, I think what we continue to message along the year, as we thought about any increases in capital associated with these opportunities around LRTP or the renewables that we should continue to think about our balance sheet in a similar fashion. And I think that’s what we’re doing here, we’re laying out this incremental really $800 million of equity. There’s some obviously retained earnings in there as well, kind of gets you back to that same sort of capitalization ratio. The ATM has served us well up to this point. I mean, we’ve taken care of all of our needs for 2023, Nick. We’ve sold forward in 2023. So we’re really finished with that $300 million. We started to sell forward into 2024. You’re right that we did increase the capacity of the ATM.

We’ll have to continue to evaluate that over time as we would run into any limits there. But again, it’s a really efficient way for us to issue capital. We think it’s a manageable amount if you look at it relative to our total market capitalization. So we feel comfortable with it. And again, I think that it provides us quite a bit of strength there as we just think about the overall funding that we need over the course of the next five years.

Nicholas Campanella: Appreciate the color. I’ll get back in the queue. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Jeremy Tonet: Hi. Good morning.

Marty Lyons: Good morning, Jeremy.

Jeremy Tonet: I just wanted to start off with, I guess, a rate base CAGR, the 8% as you laid out there in the $2.5 billion figure. Just wondering, what are the IRP assumptions in your CapEx plan update that €“ underpin the $2.5 billion there. And what does this imply for company ownership of resources versus PPA? And how do you view the overall line of sight here? And when do you expect to kind of get final commission decisions on all resources?

Marty Lyons: Yes. Good morning, Jeremy, this is Marty. There’s a few questions, I think, embedded in that question. So I’ll start and perhaps Michael would want to add on. First of all, the capital expenditures that we’ve put into the plan in Missouri for the IRP really tie to the plan that we laid out in the IRP. So if you go back and you look at that overall time line, we plan to add 800 megawatts through 2025 and then another 2,000 megawatts of renewables between 2026 and 2030. And if you just do some simple math there, it’s about 400 megawatts per year. So you end up with about 1,600 megawatts overall over a five-year period. And again, we’ve put in about $2.5 billion as an estimate for that. So that’s how it lines up. We were pleased to have the commission, Missouri Public Service Commission approved the Huck Finn project, which was a 200-megawatt solar project we’d proposed, they approved that one recently at CCN.

And of course, we’ve got the Boomtown project, which is a 150-megawatt solar project before them now and awaiting the decision. And we continue to work with developers on additional renewable projects to really fill out that plan that we have under the IRP, which we think is absolutely the most prudent way to move forward to provide our customers the reliable, affordable and cleaner energy that they’re seeking. Now back to the overall CapEx plan. What you’ll notice is we’ve got a $19.7 billion overall capital expenditure plan for 2023 to 2027. That compares to the one we had previously, which was 2022 to 2026, we had $17.3 billion. So we’ve added about $2.4 billion overall as we move from our prior plan to this one. And in Missouri in particular, I’d point out that we previously had $8.9 billion of planned expenditures moving now to $10.4 million, which is about a $1.5 billion overall addition.