Brian Bird: Now, I think when you say regulatory strategy, and again, we appreciate the current commission, and obviously, there can be changes. We certainly know there is two positions that will change. President Brown is not seeking reelection and Commissioner O’Donnell is leaving the commission, he’s termed out. So, there’s going to be change, but that doesn’t change our regulatory strategy in one iota. It doesn’t necessarily matter to sitting in those chairs. From our perspective, we want to come forth what we believe makes sense, obviously for us, but also for our customers. And that’s a point of also working with commissioners to ultimately achieve good outcomes regardless who’s sitting in those seats.
Jeremy Tonet: Got it. That makes sense there. Thank you. And then just finally, in addition to the Wildfire mitigation filings, are there any key State or Federal legislative changes that could — that you’re watching with regards to Wildfire risk in your service territory and how conversations been stakeholders trending and really do you see, I guess, the potential for national policy coordination there?
Brian Bird: Great question, Jeremy. I would tell you this, I think obviously, the industry has been focused on this quite a bit and appreciate EEI and many of the electric utilities trying to address this units — this issue, excuse me, at the Federal level. We mentioned State as well. We will be working with other utilities and co-ops in Montana regarding legislation around Wildfire mitigation. It’s early innings to determine what that would look like, but we certainly plan in the 2025 session to be bringing that forward. And obviously I think we’ll be working in many different means to try to mitigate this risk on a going forward basis. But yes we expect to see something in early January around that issue.
Jeremy Tonet: Got it. That’s very helpful. I’ll leave it there. Thanks.
Brian Bird: Thanks, Jeremy.
Travis Meyer: Thank you, Jeremy. We’ll take our next question from Alex Mortimer at Mizuho. Alex, your line should be open. So, it could be Anthony too, just dialed in under Alex.
Alexander Mortimer: Hi. Good afternoon. Sorry, can you hear me?
Travis Meyer: There we go. We got you. Yes, we sure can.
Alexander Mortimer: Sorry about that. I guess just given load growth sort of being the topic of the year right now, sort of industry-wide, can you touch on anything you’re seeing in that perspective and then as well as given potentially incremental load, sort of any upside to CapEx in your — or potentially in your plan?
Crystal Lail: Alex, it’s Crystal. I’ll take that question. I think a couple of things when it comes to load growth come to mind. First of all, I would go back to Brian’s comments on the EPA and the importance of getting our Yellowstone County facility done, which is, we sit in a unique position of being at a deficit to be able to serve our existing customers. So the criticality of executing on completing our Yellowstone County facility and addressing these issues with EPA I think would enable the next steps of investment that would allow for getting us to resource-adequate and then to be thinking about what are the options around load growth. Obviously, there is a lot of commentary in the sector on what’s going to happen with the things that are driving the broader trends, whether that’s onshoring or AI or EVs or all those things.
We’re very focused on the capital execution to support our current load and then also working with the Governor of Montana and South Dakota both economic development drivers and we want to be a partner in that. So we think there is a lot of opportunity there. But our first blocking and tackling is serving our existing load and we’re obviously pretty short of that. And the EPA may have just made us far shorter of that in a very short amount of time.
Alexander Mortimer: Understood. Thank you. And then pivoting back to Wildfire and the upcoming rate case. You mentioned attaching the Wildfire plan to the case or filing it in addition to it. Does commission approve the Wildfire plan or accept or reject? Like, can you just go through your sort of the fundamentals of what that process is going to look like?
Brian Bird: Yes. I think it’s too early to say whether they’ll effectively approve the plan or not. I think and obviously, we want support of the plan and if that’s an approval, that would be fantastic. But we want to make sure that all the stakeholders that are going to be involved with this, be it Forest Service, and many, and many other stakeholders, that we’re going to need to work with, with our Fire Mitigation Plan, and the commission as well, obviously, recovery of costs associated with that, we’re going to need people to support the plan.
Crystal Lail: And I would just add on to that. If you’re probably aware, we filed our plan previously in our last Montana electric rate review. We achieved deferral of incremental O&M costs in that plan. So support of spending as it related to executing upon and accelerating spending in that plan and obviously that discussion of, as Brian alluded to, cost recovery will continue in our upcoming filing.
Alexander Mortimer: Perfect. Thanks so much. I’ll leave it there.
Brian Bird: Thank you, Alex.
Travis Meyer: And we do not have any other questions in our queue. So, with that, I’ll turn it back to Brian for some closing remarks. Well, hold on one moment. It looks like Mr. Crowdell snuck in and wants to ask a follow-up question, potentially. Anthony?
Anthony Crowdell: Yes, apologies. I don’t know if you can hear me. Just a quick follow-up and you may not want to answer it. Just curious if the Company has an embedded interest rate forecast as we go through the year. We’re not sure if rates are going lower, they’re going higher. I’m just curious if you guys have any embedded forecasts of interest rates. And that’s all I have. Thanks.
Brian Bird: So, first of all, Crystal, do you want to not answer it because it’s Anthony or do you not want to answer it because for any other reason? That’s the question I think we need to answer first.
Crystal Lail: Well, since it’s Anthony, I will answer it.
Anthony Crowdell: Oh, good.
Crystal Lail: Say it that way. And then my first comment, I won’t tell you what that embedded number is, but I will tell you, we here at the NorthWestern have had the higher for longer view, maybe a little — maybe less upside potential than the market thought on interest rate cuts. So, where we sit from a financing plan perspective and assumptions, we feel good about where things are today. And obviously, Jay Powell signaled that he may not have — may not decide to cut rates as soon as some others may have thought. But I would just tell you, we were in the higher for longer camp and have managed our plan consistent with that.
