Image source: The Motley Fool.
DATE
Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 11 a.m. ET
CALL PARTICIPANTS
Chief Executive Officer — Drew Marsh
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer — Kimberly Fontan
Vice President, Investor Relations — Liz Hunter
Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email [email protected]
TAKEAWAYS
Adjusted Earnings Per Share -- driven by sales growth and customer investments, partially offset by higher operating expenses and increased share count.
Weather-Adjusted Sales Growth -- Weather-adjusted sales increased approximately 4.5%, with weather-adjusted industrial sales growth exceeding 7% due to new and expanding customers.
Revised 2025 EPS Guidance Range -- Raised the lower end of 2025 adjusted EPS guidance by $0.10, citing “solid results through the third quarter,” according to Drew Marsh and updated planning assumptions.
Nuclear Tax Credit Monetization -- Completed transactions netted over $535 million after costs, with customer benefit timing subject to regulatory process over an extended period.
Credit Ratings -- All operating companies affirmed by S&P and Moody’s, with “credit metric outlooks remain better than rating agency thresholds,” according to Kimberly Fontan.
2026–2029 Capital Plan -- Updated to $41 billion, with $4.4 billion of equity targeted (10%-15% of total) over 2026-2029, including alternative financing to better align cash flow with asset completion.
Equity Capitalization Progress -- Approximately $800 million in equity forward was settled through the third quarter, and an additional $330 million was settled after quarter-end (in October 2025), covering about 45% of equity need through 2027.
Customer Pipeline Expansion -- The data center growth pipeline increased from 5-10 GW last quarter to 7-12 GW, as discussed on the Q3 2025 earnings call, based on active customer discussions.
Secured Equipment for Growth -- Added agreements for 4.5 GW of “power island” equipment (steam turbines, combustion turbines, heat recovery generators) to support commercial operations from 2031 to 2032, according to Drew Marsh, to meet growing demand and future customer needs through 2032.
Supply Chain Positioning -- Secured 90% of materials needed for planned transmission projects through 2030, and approximately 75% for owned solar projects as of the third quarter, with line of sight on the remaining 25%.
MISO ARRIS Process Utilization -- Submitted interconnection requests for 12 plants through the ARRIS process, with eight in the capital plan and four for incremental growth.
Resilience and Reliability Investments -- $580 million invested in approved resilience work to date (as of the third quarter), including completion of 32 line hardening projects and 10 substation upgrades.
Awarded Grants -- Entergy Texas received $200 million from the Texas Energy Fund for resilience projects, enabling system hardening with no customer cost impact.
New Customer Initiatives -- Entergy Mississippi launched “Superpower Mississippi,” a $300 million grid hardening program announced in September 2025, funded by new large industrial customer revenues.
Regulatory Approvals -- The Louisiana PSC approved resource settlements for Meta (NASDAQ: META) in August 2025; the Texas PUCT approved generation projects with a $2.40 billion cost cap; Arkansas PSC approved new economic development rider expanding project recovery outside previous cap.
Long-Term Growth Outlook -- Outlook through 2029 extended with targeted compound annual adjusted EPS growth greater than 8%; underlying pipeline and equipment contracts support continued expansion beyond the period.
SUMMARY
While management raised the lower end of 2025 adjusted EPS guidance and extended the growth outlook through 2029, Entergy (ETR +0.51%) significantly expanded its industrial and data center load opportunity, increasing its pipeline to 7-12 GW and securing multiple large-scale equipment orders, as well as key transmission and generation materials needed through the next decade. Regulatory approvals in certain jurisdictions—including cost recovery mechanisms and new riders—position the company to accommodate accelerated customer and industrial growth, as well as major resilience investments, without raising base rates for existing customers where applicable. Cash proceeds of $535 million from monetized nuclear tax credits earned in 2024 will be returned to customers, subject to ongoing regulator-defined parameters. Approximately $800 million in equity forward was settled through the third quarter, with an additional $330 million settled after quarter-end.
Drew Marsh said, "We expect it to stay in that range over the outlook period."
The grid hardening and resilience investment program does not add any cost for Entergy Mississippi customers, funded through new large industrial revenues.
Resilience work completed thus far includes 32 line hardening projects, upgrading more than 13,000 structures, according to Drew Marsh, and hardened 10 existing substations, enhancing hurricane and storm surge mitigation.
Regarding large hyperscalers, company policy remains to include load projections in capital plans only upon the execution of signed electric service agreements (ESAs), with the current 7-12 GW opportunity reflecting pipeline discussions, but not finalized contracts, as of the third quarter.
Marsh said, "All of these projects that we are bringing on that we've contracted for these turbines, you know, we expect to achieve commercial operations by 2032. So they're all coming pretty fast."
INDUSTRY GLOSSARY
ARRIS process: MISO’s expedited resource addition study process streamlining interconnection and resource integration for new generation assets.
ESA: Electric Service Agreement, a binding contract between the utility and a customer (often a hyperscaler or industrial entity) for defined power supply terms and cost allocation.
CCGT: Combined Cycle Gas Turbine, a type of high-efficiency power generation asset often referenced in Entergy’s generation project plans.
PPE PTCs: Production tax credits applicable to property, plant, and equipment associated with nuclear generation.
LIHEAP: Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, U.S. federal program providing utility bill support to vulnerable customers.
EPC: Engineering, Procurement, and Construction contractor responsible for delivery of large-scale utility infrastructure projects.
Full Conference Call Transcript
Drew Marsh: Thank you, Liz, and good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting strong financial results as well as continued progress on business and regulatory matters. Starting with our quarterly financial results, our adjusted earnings per share was $1.53. With our results to date, our biggest quarter behind us, we are narrowing our guidance, raising the bottom by $0.10. We also remain well positioned to achieve our long-term growth outlooks. Kimberly will review the financial details in a moment. Turning to the business. Last quarter, we achieved a first quartile Net Promoter Score for utility residential service for the first time since we began tracking this metric. We're pleased to report that we've maintained our first quartile position.
We are keenly focused on meeting the needs of our 3,000,000 customers, and we believe our strategy will carry this momentum forward. Our focus on the customer starts with keeping our rates as low as possible. To begin, we aim to maintain our average rates well below the national average through the remarkable commitment and creativity of our employees and a culture of continuous improvement. Today's share of wallet is roughly the lowest our customers have seen over the last twenty years. We expect it to stay in that range over the outlook period. Of course, there's more to it than that.
We proactively manage the effect of fuel volatility on customers' bills through fuel hedging programs and mechanisms to defer fuel costs during peak prices. And for individual customers, we have developed tools to help them manage their bills, such as approved bill discounts for low-income seniors, payment options like average billing and payment timing, energy efficiency services, and customer assistance programs like power to care and LIHEAP advocacy. I'm proud to highlight that our digital LIHEAP platform recently received a silver best practice Award from Chartwell for excellence in serving vulnerable customers. This tool streamlines access to energy assistance and provides real-time app updates for customers in need.
And as we've worked to attract new hyperscale data center customers, we ensure that they pay their fair share of energy infrastructure investments while bringing other significant benefits to our communities, such as jobs, property tax payments, direct municipal infrastructure investment, and workforce development. This is consistent with their stated intent to be good neighbors. For example, at the recent groundbreaking announcement, Google said that they will protect energy affordability for existing customers by covering the full cost of powering the data center in West Memphis. They're also committed to making a significant community impact, including a $25,000,000 fund to accelerate local energy efficiency efforts and workforce development.
In September, Entergy Mississippi announced a new customer-focused initiative known as Superpower Mississippi. The initiative includes a $300,000,000 investment to harden the grid and improve reliability, with the goal of reducing outages for customers by half within five years. We're able to add this investment for grid improvements at no additional cost to Entergy Mississippi customers because of new revenues from Amazon and other large industrial customers' investments in the state. Haley Fisackerly, our CEO at Entergy Mississippi, recently noted that customer rates would be 16% lower than they otherwise would have been due to these large customers. And that includes the incremental Superpower Mississippi investment.
In customer growth news, in late September, Sempra reached its final investment decision for phase two of its Port Arthur LNG project. In addition, a colocation data center Avaya announced an investment in Intrigue, Mississippi service area. While these were included in our probability-weighted sales forecast, these developments continue to build confidence in our long-term outlook. As a reminder, we probability weight potential industrial customers in our plans except for very large businesses like hyperscale data centers, which we don't add to our plans until there is a signed electric service agreement.
Because of our vertical integration, natural Gulf Coast advantages, thoughtful regulation, a long history of successfully working with large industrial projects, and now MISO's expedited connection mechanisms, we continue to see strong demand from businesses looking to locate in our service areas. This includes data centers, but also customers from traditional industrial segments. Our data center pipeline has continued to grow and now is sending to from seven to 12 gigawatts. This is based on active conversations with customers for whom we reasonably could expect to sign agreements within the next year or two.
With line of sight on incremental opportunities, we've added 4.5 gigawatts to our agreement for the purchase of power island equipment, including steam turbines, combustion turbines, and heat recovery steam generators. This addition represents six units that will be delivered in time to support commercial operations in 2031 to 2032. In total, we now have secured more than 19 gigawatts of capacity, 11 gigawatts of which is accounted for due to growth or other supply needs. That leaves eight gigawatts for additional growth. We secured other critical equipment, including transformers and breakers, and we secured 90% of materials required for our planned transmission projects through 2030. We also have agreements with EPCs for the generation projects through mid-2029.
We have line of sight for additional projects. We're also well positioned for solar projects. For our owned projects, we secured approximately 75% of our critical equipment, including generator step-up transformers, high voltage breakers, and solar modules. We also have clear line of sight for the remaining 25% through our existing supplier relationships. In July, FERC approved MISO's expedited resource addition study, or ARRIS process. We have since submitted nine interconnection requests for 12 plants into the new process. Eight of these plants in our ARRIS submission are in our plan, and four are available for incremental growth.
Ares has worked well to support speed to market for customers trying to come online as quickly as possible, as well as help us respond to the national security priority for rapid energy deployment to win the AI race. Expect to start receiving our first project approvals by the end of this year. The standardized designs for our generation projects and our transmission lines, and our history of successful execution on large projects, we remain confident in our ability to manage our operations and execute on our capital plan. We're also well positioned to serve potential new customers above our current plan.
For the customer base that continues to grow, perhaps it is no surprise that our system, as well as Entergy Arkansas and Entergy Texas, hit new peak loads in July. Our system performed well during these high load periods. Responding to that customer growth, Entergy Texas remains on track for the completion of the Orange County Advanced Power Station next spring. The plant's decommissioning actually, not decommissioning. The plant's commissioning, we're just getting started with that one. The plant's commissioning is underway. And first fire is expected in December. Our other large generation and transmission projects are also on track. Last week, Entergy Mississippi broke ground on the Vicksburg Advanced Power Station.
We'll also support customer growth, including the large customer that Entergy Mississippi signed this past February. Entergy Louisiana recently announced selections from its base load generation RFP to support customer growth. That includes two combined cycle resources that will be self-built. For accelerated resilience, expect to file phase two plans in Louisiana and New Orleans within the next several months. This timing allows us to maintain operational momentum with our resilience investments. To date, our operating companies have invested about $580,000,000 in approved resilience work. We completed 32 line hardening projects, upgrading more than 13,000 structures. And we have hardened 10 existing substations to mitigate the impact of both hurricane-force winds and storm surge.
In addition, Entergy Texas was recently awarded $200,000,000 in grant funding by the PUCT from the Texas Energy Fund for resilience projects, with no cost to customers. The grant will allow for the hardening of more than 8,000 distribution poles covering 338 miles, both hardening 16 transmission lines. We appreciate the proactive support from our state regulators and legislative bodies to improve the storm readiness of our system for the benefit of all customers. With the customer growth opportunity before us and excitement throughout our service areas, we continue to work with our stakeholders, including regulators, elected leaders, community leaders, and local vendors, to meet customers' needs and to improve their outcome.
In August, Louisiana Public Service Commission approved the settlement for generation and transmission resource needed to serve Meta. Meta's generational investment will bring significant benefits, including jobs, workforce development, and state and local tax income. In addition, as the LPSC staff highlighted, at the business and executive meeting, contracted minimum bills ensure that Meta is paying the incremental cost to serve them during the contract term without imposing costs on other customers. These features provide benefits to support keeping rates as low as for Louisiana customers. Last week, Louisiana Public Service Commission also approved the 200 megawatt Bogalusa West solar project, which was the first project approved through Louisiana's accelerated solar approval process.
In Arkansas, the Public Service Commission approved the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act rider. This rider, enabled by the legislation this past spring, allows recovery for new economic development-related and other customer-critical generation and transmission investments outside of the formula rate plan's 4% cap. Additionally, it includes recovery of carrying costs on CWIP during construction, thus lowering costs for customers. Under the new rider, Entergy Arkansas filed in early August for the Jefferson Power Station approval. Also under the new rider, NTG Arkansas filed for approval in September for Cypress Solar, a solar and battery storage facility to support economic development via Google's recently announced data center.
Moving to Texas, In September, the Public Utility Commission approved the Legend combined cycle power station. And Lone Star, a simple cycle peaking unit. They will provide efficient, reliable power to support the rapid growth in our Southeast Texas service area. While the commission approved the generation, also implemented a cost cap in our filed cost estimates totaling $2,400,000,000 including transmission, carrying costs, and contingency. As I noted earlier, we have already contracted with the EPC and secured the long lead time equipment. Which comprise a significant portion of the construction cost. The Texas Commission also recently approved two large transmission projects that serve growth improve reliability and resilience of the system.
CTECs, the Southeast Texas area reliability project, at $1,400,000,000 500 kV line and the Legend of Sandling 230 kV line which will serve industrial customers in Port Arthur including phase two of the Sempra LNG project. Separately, Entergy Texas filed for an increase in its DCRF rider. We expect the decision from the PUCT by the end of the year. These are exciting times in Entergy. And exciting times for our industry. We are delivering unprecedented growth for our region, and economic development that benefits the customers and communities we serve. The same time, are answering the call to support our national security through our rapid response to the energy needs of companies working to win the global AI race.
All that while keeping rates as low as possible for our customers. The EEI financial conference is in a couple of weeks. And we'll share additional color regarding the strong foundations underpinning our differentiated growth story. Notably, our long-term customer sales growth outlook is robust. Including continued support from both traditional industrial and data center customers. We are well positioned to support speed to market through our supply chain positioning design choices, stakeholder engagement, and strong balance sheet. And we are successfully executing on critical issues that our existing customers care about. Including keeping rates as low as possible and deploying resilience and reliability investments.
We look forward to continuing this conversation with you at the EEI Financial in a couple of weeks. I'll now turn the call over to Kimberly who will review our financial results for the quarter.
Kimberly Fontan: Thank you, Drew. Good morning, everyone. We had another great quarter. I'll now walk through our financial results as well as our guidance and outlooks, and I'll provide a look ahead to EEI. Starting with earnings, our adjusted EPS for the quarter was 1.53 as shown on Slide four. Primary drivers were strong sales growth and the effects of investments made for our customers. Partially offset by higher other O and M and other operating expenses and an increase in our share count from settling equity forward. Earnings contribution from sales growth was positive even with weather being milder this quarter compared to last year. Weather adjusted sales for the quarter were once again very strong, increasing approximately 4.5%.
Industrial sales were the largest contributor with more than 7% growth. Primarily from new and expansion customers that continue to ramp up their operations. Slide five summarizes our credit ratings and affirms that our credit metric outlooks remain better than rating agency thresholds. In the quarter, S and P issued credit reports on each of our operating companies and Entergy Corp. Moody's also issued reports on Entergy Mississippi and Entergy New Orleans. Both agencies affirmed all ratings and outlooks. Last quarter, we discussed the nuclear tax credits earned in 2024. Since then, we have completed transactions to monetize these which netted more than $535,000,000 after transaction costs.
We continue to work with our regulators on how and over what time period we will provide these benefits to customers. We expect this to happen over an extended period of time. As a reminder, because the value of nuclear PPE PTCs is highly dependent on average revenue per megawatt hour, we do not include cash benefits in our cash flow or credit metric outlooks beyond 2025. We'll talk more about our credit at EEI, but I'll give you a quick preview. Our credit metric outlooks are strong with FFO to debt above our threshold throughout the outlook period, achieving our 15% target during the period. Our financial health is bolstered by all the work we've done.
Including the structure of our new large customer ESAs to protect existing customers and our credits improvement in our pension funded status, constructive regulatory mechanisms, and conservative planning assumptions. All of these have strengthened our balance sheet and created benefits for our customers. We continue to see strong underlying fundamentals and flexibility to meet our objectives. We are rolling forward our outlooks to 2029. Shifting our four-year capital and equity plans forward as you can see on slide six. Our updated capital plan for 2026 through 2029 is $41,000,000,000. The equity associated with that plan is $4,400,000,000 within the 10% to 15% range of the total capital plan.
Our capital and equity plans include alternative financing assumptions, which shift the capital outlay for some projects beyond our 2029 outlook. This better aligns the cash outflow with when assets are placed in service. We have been proactive in addressing our equity needs selling forward contracts through our ATM as well as the block transaction we executed in March. We've taken significant price risk off the table and have ample time to raise capital including through our ATM program. For our 2026 through 2029 equity need, about 45% is already contracted, which takes us well into 2027. Through the third quarter, we have settled approximately $800,000,000 of equity forward.
In October, after quarter end, we settled an additional $330,000,000 or about 5,700,000.0 shares. Are using these funds to continue to invest for the benefit of our customers. Our adjusted EPS guidance and outlook are shown on Slide seven. As Drew mentioned, with solid results through the third quarter, we are narrowing our 2025 guidance range raising the bottom by point one zero dollars Higher than planned revenue from weather as well as other planning updates have enabled us to manage the business and flex spending in areas that benefit our customers. Our flex program helps us ensure that we deliver predictable adjusted EPS growth year in and year out while meeting our customer needs.
Looking beyond 2025, we continue to see very strong growth driven by our customer-centric capital plan. Our adjusted EPS through 2028 remains unchanged And as we add 2029 to our outlook period, our long-term compound annual growth remains strong. At greater than 8%. Drew and I, along with our operating company leaders, will be in Florida, in less than two weeks where we will talk about our strong customer growth story as well as our plans to invest in reliability and resilience to better serve our customers. We have a solid base plan consistent with our strategic objectives.
As Drew discussed, we have a strong customer pipeline including seven to 12 gigawatts of data center opportunities and we have secured critical equipment to bring additional customers online. Today, we have provided our adjusted earnings per share outlook and a high-level view of our preliminary capital and equity plans through 2029. At EEI, we will provide more details on these outlooks. We are excited about the opportunities before us and look forward to talking with you at EEI. And now the Entergy team is available for questions.
Liz Hunter: Thanks, Kimberly.
Greg: And at this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit your questions to one primary and one you in advance. All right. Looks like our first question today comes from the line of Shar Pourreza with Wells Fargo. Shar, please go ahead.
Konstantin Lednev: Hi, good morning, Drew, Kimberly. It's actually Constantine here for Shar. Good morning. Congrats on a great quarter. Maybe starting off on the updated CapEx plan, and kind of the 4.5 gigawatts of the power island equipment. That directly associated with some of the more visible load in the current pipeline Do you anticipate any incremental CapEx needs that would require regulatory approval? Before making into the '29 plan? Just how should we thinking about the upside here?
Kimberly Fontan: Yeah. Good morning, Constantine. It's Kimberly. The $41,000,000,000 includes the capital that's needed to support the load that is in forecast. The four and a half incremental gigawatts that Drew referenced would support additional customers that come online. So he referenced seven to 12 gigawatts in the data center. That's up from five to 10 in the last quarter. And we've added, as you noted, additional, plant power island equipment in order to support that. To the extent that those customers in that pipeline reach agreement, we would expect the you would need supplemental capital to support that, and that's what we planned ahead for here.
Konstantin Lednev: Okay. Perfect. And then maybe shifting to the longer-term outlook, kind of with the large load growth solidifying under contract, you're locking in kind of the CapEx plans and the associated equipment. You see any opportunity to potentially guide on the longer-term EPS growth outlook beyond 2030? Just as you kind of gain that visibility?
Kimberly Fontan: As you as you know, we added 2029 here. You know, certainly, good visibility through that period. If we're able to land additional customers that will provide you that visibility there. But going beyond that, I think we'll just you know, this good visibility here including individual outlooks by year but we do think we have long-term opportunity over beyond this period.
Konstantin Lednev: Okay. Perfect. And just a quick follow-up on kind of the generation needs kind of more broadly. You see customers agnostic to the resource mix? Or is there is there still a push for some renewable components as we've kind of seen with hyperscalers demanding for nuclear SMRs and other technologies?
Kimberly Fontan: We talk to our customers about all kinds of supply. Certainly, we've lined up here. Drew referenced both gas resources as well as renewable. We resources. We do have a pipeline of opportunity around renewables. Based on customer needs, but we also continue to look for ways to meet their needs to ensure that we are speed to market as well as meeting clean needs. So we think it's an all about the approach over time.
Drew Marsh: Yeah. And, Constantine, I'll just add that, you know, we are building this gas generation, but we have expectations that we will also do carbon capture at some point. And we are working on that actively. We have RFPs out in for some of our assets in Mississippi and in Texas. To test that, we still have FEED studies going on at our Lake Charles power station in Louisiana, and we're exploring various options to figure that out. And we're supported by, you know, our data center customers that are wanting to achieve those same objectives. So think we're well positioned to figure that out, over time. But we don't have anything specific to announce today.
Konstantin Lednev: Excellent. Seems like a wonderful back backdrop. I appreciate the questions today.
Drew Marsh: Thanks, Thanks.
Greg: Yes. Thank you. And our next question today comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Jeremy, please go ahead.
Jeremy Tonet: Hi, good morning. Good morning. Just wanted to dive in maybe a little bit more on the forward outlook as well. I think some of the commentaries might have highlighted the capital shifting out closer to plant COD and maybe that kind of spills over into past plan period. So just wondering if you could talk a bit, I guess, on the momentum across the plan and where you know, how that looks after the plan, given think you've said in the past how this accelerates into the end of the decade?
Kimberly Fontan: Good morning, Jeremy. It's Kimberly. I guess just to clarify, $41,000,000,000 through 2029. I referenced some plant that closes outside the period. Some of that is alternate finance. So you don't see the spend in this period, and all the spend would go out when that closes. So that was that reference there. But certainly with the additional equipment that we've secured in the pipeline that we see, we would expect investment to continue well beyond this period.
Drew Marsh: Yeah. And we do have turbine slots that are delivering for, you know, commercial operations in 2930 that still have not been announced, as overall projects. So there are still opportunities that could add additional capital in the out part of our current outlook period.
Jeremy Tonet: Got it. That's helpful. Thank you for that. And maybe pivoting to Arkansas here, if you could comment a little bit more, I guess, on, the ramp for Google there, the project there? And just wondering anymore color you might be able to provide as well as local stakeholder views and, I guess, commission priorities, how that all kind of fits together at this point.
Kimberly Fontan: Yes. That project is obviously in early stages. It was filed in September, but the customer is continuing to move forward with the ramp we would expect. As you know, there are minimum bills associated with all of these large customers. That help support during the construction period. But I don't see anything different on that ramp and than where we have been similar to all of our other customers.
Drew Marsh: Yeah. And people are excited in Arkansas for that project. At Google's groundbreaking last month, the governor was there, and numerous local leaders, including the mayor of West Memphis, and also the 600 megawatt solar facility and the 350 megawatt battery, that are gonna be part of supporting Google. And that investment is traveling through the Arkansas commission's docket as well. So we'll we expect to work through that process, with the various stakeholders But there at this point, there's a lot of support in Arkansas for the economic development that this opportunity brings.
Jeremy Tonet: Got it. Thanks for that. And maybe just taking a step back overall, I guess, commercial discussions here hyperscalers. At this point, I guess, how would you describe the tone or pace of discussions here? Is there more or less urgency to sign up incremental, load at this point given the success that you've had so far?
Kimberly Fontan: Well, certainly, I would point to the raise of the from five to 10 to seven to 12 gigawatts around our increased customer conversations. Those conversations cover all the things that we've talked about before, speed to market, getting to claim, and also how the stakeholders and bringing the stakeholders along. As Drew said in Arkansas, very excitement very excited about that transaction in Arkansas. So we think the conversations continue to be strong and continue to support our incremental increase in that pipeline.
Jeremy Tonet: Got it. One last quick one if I could on the transmission side. Just given some of the load shed events due to storm activity earlier in the year, wondering how you think about the opportunity to deploy more transmission, enhance flexibility, such as increasing connectivity into Mississippi. Just wondering how you see the opportunity set at this point?
Drew Marsh: Yeah. We do still see a robust transmission opportunity, but it'll be customer driven. Based on how the grid needs to adapt to know, continued growth in our service territory. Right now, we have a very robust you know, over 400 miles of 500 k v line. We have a lot of 230 k transmission, that we are also building. We're getting ready to file in Louisiana. The Babble to Weber line. I think I talked about that last quarter. Which is which is part of that 500 k b system, and we have approvals pending. In Texas and in and in Louisiana on transmission right now.
So there is the possibility for significantly more We have quite a bit coming through the MTEP process. It's seeking, MISO approval by the end of this year. And then, know, depending on the growth, there could be additional, investment opportunities out there. So we're we're expecting, continued significant transmission investment going forward.
Jeremy Tonet: Got it. Very helpful. I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Drew Marsh: Thank you.
Greg: Thanks, Jeremy. And our next question comes from the line of David Arcaro with Morgan Stanley. David, please go ahead. Hey, thanks so much. Good morning.
David Arcaro: Good morning. I was wondering let's see, you might have said before, but I may have missed it. What's the timeframe for the 4.5 gigawatts of the power equipment that you secured? And I guess I was wondering, is this a stepping stone? Are you still actively working to secure additional power equipment in a similar way?
Drew Marsh: The timing for the extra six units would support commercial operations in 2030 and 2032. So that's about you know, we're using our standard design of 750 megawatts. That's what comes to a little over four gigawatts. So that's the that's the plan. And I can't remember the last part of your question, David. Remind me.
David Arcaro: Yeah. Curious if this is a stepping stone. Are you still actively in discussions and working to increase your access to gas turbine supply beyond that 4.5 right now, it matches what we see as our customer needs. So yeah, if there continues to be growth, then we may continue to go into the market and seek additional turbine access. But I think that's that's where I would put it right now. It's it's meeting our expectations of potential growth that we see, in the near term. We're also looking at a number of other things. You know, we continue to monitor new nuclear and look into that, and talk to our customers about that.
You know, we are also as you saw with the Google transaction, you know, there's potential for solar and battery. And then, we're also looking at a number of upgrades on our system, to provide incremental supply. So there's several things that are out there that could still drive incremental generation capacity even beyond just gas turbines. Got it. Great.
David Arcaro: Yes, thanks for that. And I was curious just to get your latest thoughts on the potential to expand nuclear capacity in your service territory and any reaction or impacts to your thinking from the recent Westinghouse and U. S. Government? Announces? Mean, announcements that we've seen?
Drew Marsh: Yes. We thank you for that question. Actually excited to see that there's some investments going in. You know, what the industry really needs is to get to nth of a kind, to manage the, the construction risk and we're excited to see someone you know, moving forward. And so, you know, we certainly applaud the work that Brookfield and Westinghouse and Cameco are doing with the feds to figure this out. Obviously, there's still a lot of details that need to come out about that, so we're anxious to get into that conversation with them at some point. About what exactly they're doing and how they're shaping all that up.
But yeah, we are excited to see that it's moving forward and has an opportunity to really move the industry forward. So, you know, with all that being said, you know, we still have a lot of interest in our service territory from our stakeholders. To bring new nuclear into Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Each state has some sort of commission or task force or something like that. Looking at how do we bring new nuclear in, and we're a member of all of them. So we continue to actively look at it. We as we've said in the past, we haven't we haven't figured it out yet.
And then but there is a lot of interest from our stakeholders, and so we continue to explore.
David Arcaro: Okay, great. That's helpful. Thanks so much.
Drew Marsh: Thank you.
Greg: Thanks, David. And our next question comes from the line of Angie Storozynski with Seaport. Angie, please go ahead.
Agnieszka Anna Storozynski: Thank you. So I was just wondering, we've all read about the Manhattan sized data center in your Louisiana service territory from Meta. So how much of that is currently covers covered by ESAs and reflected in your pipeline?
Drew Marsh: So right now, the only thing that we have in our is the signed ESA that we previously announced. Basically about a year ago almost now. So that, that project has been publicly said by Meta to be two gigawatts of compute. And so anything beyond that is not currently reflected in our in our outlook. And we wouldn't comment on any specifics of the size or timing of any project, just like for that for that potential opportunity even though, you know, we know that they've been posting about it. But yeah, we wouldn't comment on it consistent with our ongoing policy for not commenting on specific customer opportunities.
Agnieszka Anna Storozynski: And it's but, again, is it because it's, the ESA hasn't been signed? Is it because it's beyond the planning horizon when this investment would need to happen?
Drew Marsh: Well, it's not necessarily because the e s e ESA hasn't been signed. You know, we wouldn't comment generally about ongoing negotiations with anybody But as it as it relates to putting prod large data center projects into our capital plan, we would need a signed ESA to do that. That's been our policy because these projects are so large. They have such an impact know, it doesn't really fit with our probability weighting methodology that we've had. For forever. So we still use that methodology with our more traditional industrial projects like steel mills and LNG terminals and petrochem facilities and the like. But for these really large data centers, it's either all in or all out.
So we haven't included anything in our outlook to support any large data centers at this at this time.
Agnieszka Anna Storozynski: Awesome. That's all I had. Thank you.
Drew Marsh: Thank you, Angie.
Greg: Thank you, Angie. And our next question comes from the line of Sophie Karp with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Sophie, please go ahead.
Sophie Karp: Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. A couple of questions for me. Hi. Yeah. So on the regulatory front, given all of the, you know, demand and the from a large customers and the all the strength that we know about. You envision that you will need something more beyond your regular formula rate plan? Proceeding agent to accommodate that growth and recovery? Of course.
Drew Marsh: I didn't catch all of that. Sophie, you're you're breaking up a little bit. Do we need something beyond what exactly were you talking about?
Sophie Karp: Yeah. Do you think that you will need a regulatory proceeding that goes, like, beyond your regular formal rate plan reviews to accommodate all the growth that you have on the system?
Drew Marsh: Yeah. It depends on the jurisdiction. Thank you for that. Clarifying. It depends on the jurisdiction. In Mississippi, you know, they have the law that allows for very large economic development projects to move forward with the presumption of the certificate, the effectively the presumption of the certificate of convenience and necessity. Course, we still ultimately have to go back through regulatory approval for formula rate plans and the like in Mississippi. So it's not like the commission's not involved. But be able to kind of move forward there. And in the Louisiana and in Arkansas, You know, Arkansas just passed the generating our jobs act, which allows for an expedited process.
And so we're actually using those processes right now. So we'd still continue to go through the process in Arkansas, and we'd expect the same. In Louisiana. So I think we'd be using the same processes that we have today. Both in Louisiana, Arkansas, and, I guess, in Mississippi, although Mississippi is very different for those large economic development projects. That we've used in the past. And but they would all be somewhat expedited, given what we've seen and the interest from the various stakeholders in each jurisdiction.
Sophie Karp: Got it. Got it. Thank you. And then my other question was the 12 gigawatt pipeline, could you help us and break it down by I guess, the stage It's it's in, like, how much of that is in a stage versus the slightly earlier maybe in the process?
Kimberly Fontan: Hi, Sophie. It's Kimberly. I would not think of that as signed ESAs. That is in the pipeline. It's in various stages but not all the way to the end. As Drew mentioned earlier, we don't include in our forecast until we get to certain around assigned ESA. So that would not be in that seven to 12 gigawatts that we gave.
Sophie Karp: Okay. Got it. This is all, incremental to ES that you have in your plan.
Kimberly Fontan: That's right.
Drew Marsh: Yeah. And I would just add that our actual pipeline goes well beyond that, you know, I think these are ones that we feel like we would could reasonably see come to fruition in the next year or two.
Sophie Karp: Got it. Thank you. Appreciate the answers.
Drew Marsh: Thank you.
Greg: Thanks, Sophie. And our next question comes from the line of Paul Zimbardo with Jefferies. Paul, please go ahead.
Paul Zimbardo: Hi, good morning. Thank you.
Drew Marsh: Good morning, Paul.
Paul Zimbardo: I had a clarifying question following up on David's a little bit. Could you explain the comment on the eight gigawatts for additional growth from the power commitments above the plan? As I recall, it was seven gigawatts from the second quarter call and I know you said you added 4.5 gigawatts. Does that mean you execute against some of that incremental opportunity I just feel confused on that piece, if you could clarify.
Kimberly Fontan: Sure, Paul. I would think about in the second quarter call, we said 15 gigawatts eight was in the forecast through '28. Seven was for growth. We now have 19 and a half gigawatts compared to that 15, and eight is for growth. So that delta is what I was referencing earlier around. It's either in the forecast or it's in the forecast, but the capital closes outside the period. So you're not necessarily seeing that. So that's how you get to that eight gigawatts of incremental growth.
Paul Zimbardo: Okay. Very clear. That's what I thought. Thank you. Then I know you talked a lot about the renewable side today and obviously Google is doing solar and storage. Are there any and we focus a lot on the turbines of course. Are there any commitments in megawatts, gigawatts on the renewable side solar and storage that we should be thinking about also as kind of upside opportunities to the plant to serve hyperscalers?
Drew Marsh: Yeah. I think you we would expect that, there would be additional renewables associated with large hyperscaler deployment in some way. We certainly seen that with each of our announcements thus far. You know, AWS had I think, about 600 megawatts of solar associated with Google similarly. And then Meta also had, 1,500 megawatts of solar. So I would expect that there would be some solar out there commitments as well.
Paul Zimbardo: Okay. Great. So we should think of that as kinda up upside to the gas gigawatts? You talked about?
Drew Marsh: Yeah. Potentially. I mean, there's also you know, there's a lot of solar projects out there. There's also still the potential for PPAs. But know, we would wanna try to compete to land some of those projects ourselves, for our own capital deployment.
Paul Zimbardo: Yep. Excellent. Thank you very much.
Drew Marsh: Thanks, Paul.
Greg: Thank you, Paul. And our next question comes from the line of Anthony Cradell with Mizuho. Anthony, please go ahead.
Anthony Crowdell: Hey, good morning, team. Thanks for taking my question. I think one just maybe a follow-up. On the 4.5 gigawatts, I guess, of the additional power equipment, Is that incremental to what's on Slide 14 of I guess you have seven CCGTs listed, that is incremental to that?
Drew Marsh: Yes. It would be. I'm looking okay. We got slide four up here in the room, and, yes, it would be incremental to the ones that are there. There are other ones that we know, that are part of the our overall 19 gigawatts that aren't on that page before you get to the four and a half that we added. But yes, the four and a half would be incremental to what's on that page.
Anthony Crowdell: Great. And then just on and I think you touched on in your prepared remarks, on EPC availability it doesn't seem like there's any issue getting craft labor contracts to build all the generation. Just to get provide any color whereas we've seen other large projects that maybe have struggled in the size of all of these projects. It's kinda you know, tremendous, but yet no issues on labor. Just wanna know if you give any color on
Drew Marsh: Well, I'd say that there are real challenges with labor. I don't I don't think that, certainly not easy to get you know, the labor lined up. There is a real need for skilled craft, of all types. And that hasn't changed. And the result has been that they're are increasing costs associated with these combined cycle projects. And so that's the you know, we've been hearing about that trend. It is very real. Our projects aren't immune to that. But we're we're working through it with the EPCs.
Anthony Crowdell: Great. Congrats on a great update, and thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Anthony.
Drew Marsh: Thank you.
Greg: And our next question comes from the line of Andrew Weisel with Scotiabank. Andrew, please go ahead.
Andrew Weisel: Hey, thanks. Good morning, everybody. If I can first piggyback on Angie's question about the massive data center build outs, I don't need or expect you to comment specifically on Meta's Hyperion project, but how are you thinking about the potential for some of these data centers to build on-site power generation themselves? Have you been talking to them about their interest in self generating versus buying power from your utilities? I know your CapEx and earnings outlooks are based on real signed contracts, but how are you thinking about that going forward?
Drew Marsh: Well, I would say that you know, in order to manage transmission costs, you know, we are actually building generation, in many cases, very close to where the customer is located. So maybe it's not on-site or behind the meter, but it's very close. So you could see that with the meta project and stuff like that. So I think there's yeah. In some ways, there's distinction without a difference, from a physical grid perspective. And then secondly, I would say that you know, these customers while they certainly have the wherewithal to do their own generation, they prefer to put their capital into you know, something else.
And so even see that with, I would say, Meta's recent financing of their facility where their lease it back. In North Louisiana. Know, they have a lot of capital needs So if they could avoid putting capital into generating stations, I think they would probably prefer to do that. So while it is possible that they could go behind the meter, think competitively, know, we are well positioned to support their growth by putting our own plants nearby, getting essentially the same benefits. And supporting the capital that you know, that's not, you know, making the capital deployment somewhere else to support them. On our books. Rather than having them have to carry it on their own balance sheet.
Andrew Weisel: Okay. Thank you. Then in Arkansas, I believe you're planning to file a rate case early next year. You talked about the hyperscalers helping with customer affordability and paying their fair share. Can you maybe preview the filing a little bit in terms of customer bill impacts and what roles Google might play in that case?
Drew Marsh: Yeah. I don't I can't give you an update today. The team's still working on the case. I don't wanna I don't wanna get out in front of them. But, you know, I think in Arkansas, know, as we look out over time, you see similar types of things that you've seen in the other jurisdictions where the benefits associated with the large new customer help out the existing customers. And so we would expect to lay that out, as part of the rate case going forward. And, frankly, within the ongoing conversation that we're having right now with the existing processes over the formula. The special rate contract that we filed for in Arkansas for Google. Okay.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Andrew.
Greg: And our next question comes from the line of Alex Kania with BTIG. Alex, please go ahead. Hey. Good morning. Just maybe trying to tie around this 4.5 gigawatts of I was just wondering if you could maybe tie that with the comments made a little bit, earlier on the, harass, you know, queue as well or is that four and a half, gigawatts? Is that tied to those extra incremental? I feel like four, four projects in the queue? And then maybe more broadly, if, you know, the arrest, you know, you know process right now is working as intended and seemingly should be able to kind of help for the forward needs?
Drew Marsh: Yeah. The four and a half gigawatt those extra six turbines are not yet represented in the ARRISQ. Those are the things that are in the ARRISQ would be much more near term than those. You know, those projects are, as I said earlier, are searching for COD in the 2031, 2032 time frame. And the projects that we have in the ARRIS queue would be coming in much earlier than that. So, hopefully, that answers your question.
Alex Kania: Got it. So in some ways then that those turbines in the queue would represent, know, incremental nearer term demand if the opportunity arises?
Drew Marsh: That's correct.
Alex Kania: Okay. Great. Thanks very much.
Drew Marsh: You're welcome.
Greg: All right. Thanks, Alex. And our next question comes from the line of Steve D'Ambrizi with RBC Capital Markets. Steve, please go ahead.
Steve D'Ambrizi: Hi, Drew and Kimberly. Thanks very much for taking my question. Good morning. Good morning. Just kind of again on some of the this discussion around the dispatch generation. Can you talk a little bit more about the alternative financing agreements that you guys are using And just can I you know, extrapolate what that is, the sizing of that if you've gone from eight gigawatts I think was committed in 2Q to now implied 11 gigawatts and Q3? Does that three gigawatt increase, is that basically what's being alternatively financed in outside of the plan? Just can you give a flavor of the timing around that? And the magnitude?
Because it seems like that would be, you know, a 6 to 7 and a half billion dollars of spend that could come in thirty or thirty one, which would look like it would drive a an outsized amount of growth.
Kimberly Fontan: Steve, it's Kimberly. I wouldn't think of it as a direct correlation that alternate financing and the three gigawatts or that you referenced. First, we added an year, so you roll forward to 2029, and you can see the run rate of that is consistent with where we've been in each of the prior years before that. So that's your biggest piece. There is some alternate financing. We talked about that actually in our legend filing in Texas as a way to help with the overall cost, but also time that closing with when that asset goes into service and throws off cash. So we haven't sized that.
We'll have a little more visibility into that in EEI, but I think your numbers are a bit outsized relative to what you have here, and I would think more about the 2029 addition.
Steve D'Ambrizi: Okay. Alright. That's helpful. Thank you very much. Add to that. Sorry, Steve. Just to add to that, you know, all of these projects that we are bringing on that we've contracted for these turbines, you know, we expect to achieve commercial operations by 2032. So they're all coming pretty fast, and, you and you could see a number of them on that page 14 that we were referencing earlier. But there's a whole bunch more. Know, on the in the next few years, just beyond that. If everything comes together on the schedule that we've laid out with the with the turbine orders.
So there is quite a bit of capital just over the horizon from 2029, to support that kind of potential build out. Okay.
Steve D'Ambrizi: That's helpful. Thanks very much. The plan. Appreciate it.
Drew Marsh: Thank you.
Greg: Thanks, Steve. And it looks like there are no further questions. So at this time, I will now turn the call back over to Liz Hunter for closing comments. Liz?
Liz Hunter: Thank you, Craig, and thanks to everyone for participating this morning. Our quarterly report on Form 10 Q is due to the SEC on November 10 and provides more details and disclosures about our financial statement. Events that occur prior to the date of our 10 Q filing provide additional evidence of conditions that existed at the date of the balance sheet would be reflected in our financial statements in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Also, as a reminder, we maintain a web page as part of Entergy's Investor Relations website called Regulatory and Other Information, which provides key updates of regulatory proceedings and important milestones on our strategic execution.
While some of this information may be considered material information, you should not rely exclusively on this page for all relevant company information. And this concludes our call. You very much.
Greg: Thanks, everyone. Again, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.