Martin J. Lyons
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Ameren
Thanks, Andrew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. This morning, we will discuss 2024 financial results, recap events and accomplishments and look-ahead to 2025 and beyond. What you will hear is that the Ameren team's collective efforts produce strong results operationally and financially in 2024. And just as important, the team accomplished strategic goals that position our company to provide higher levels of satisfaction for our customers and strong returns for our shareholders in the years ahead.
In 2025, we are again set-up to deliver strong results, but also to take meaningful steps towards enabling our communities to benefit from significant economic development opportunities. Those opportunities offer direct investment in our states, bringing jobs and incremental tax revenue. And for Ameren, as we discuss our plans today, it means sales growth and the need to accelerate capital investments to meet the energy needs driven by that industrial demand.
Starting on Page 4, we continue to be guided by our three-pillar strategy to invest in rate-regulated infrastructure, to enhance regulatory frameworks and advocate for responsible energy policy and optimize our operating performance. This strategy has served us well for the last decade, and we will remain focused on solid execution year in and year out to maximize value for our customers, communities and shareholders.
With that, let me summarize our 2024 performance on Page 5. I'm pleased to say that we accomplished all our key business objectives outlined at this time last year and on this page. Importantly, we strategically invested approximately $4.3 billion in energy infrastructure, secured timely regulatory approvals for future investment and prudently managed our operating costs while delivering reliable energy service. And yesterday, we announced 2024 adjusted earnings of $4.63 per share compared to earnings of $4.38 per share in 2023. This result was above our 2024 adjusted earnings guidance midpoint.
Turning to Page 6, which highlights the benefits of the investments we are making for our customers. The successful execution of our strategy continues to drive improved reliability and strong customer service, while keeping customer rates low in comparison to the national and Midwest averages. Further, our ongoing infrastructure investments improve grid resilience as demonstrated by the performance of our system during severe winter storms in early-January of this year.
Despite challenging conditions, our grid improvements prevented over 3.5 million minutes of potential outage time across our service territories in Missouri and Illinois. Importantly, we had no issues on the more than 250 miles of power lines that have already been updated through Ameren Missouri's Smart Energy Plan.
On Page 7, we summarize our strong performance for shareholders over-time. Our goal, like we've said in the past, is to deliver at the midpoint or higher within our earnings guidance range. Our weather-normalized adjusted earnings per share have risen at an approximate 7.6% compound annual growth rate since 2013, while our annual dividends paid per share have increased approximately 68%. This has driven a strong total return of nearly 250% for our shareholders over the same-period, which was significantly above utility index averages.
Moving to Page 8, as we look to the opportunities ahead. In 2025, our focus will be on continuing to provide safe, reliable service to our customers at competitive rates, while bringing additional growth opportunities to our states. We'll do this first and foremost by investing approximately $4.2 billion in electric, natural gas and transmission infrastructure to bolster the safety, security, reliability and responsiveness of the energy grid. Further, we're focused on enhancing our generation plans to meet customers' needs, achieving constructive regulatory outcomes and advocating for policies that enhance reliability and resource adequacy as well as attracting new businesses to our communities. As always, while we work to accomplish these objectives, we will remain focused on operating as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Moving to Page 9 for an update on our long-term growth outlook. We continue to expect 2025 earnings to be in a range of $4.85 per share to $5.05 per share. The midpoint of this range represents approximately 7% earnings per share growth compared to our adjusted 2024 earnings results. Building on the execution of our strategy and track-record of strong earnings growth, we expect to deliver 6% to 8% compound annual earnings per share growth from 2025 through 2029 using the midpoint of our 2025 guidance of $4.95 per share as the base. We're excited about the robust sales growth and energy infrastructure investment opportunities in front of us, which strengthen our confidence in our ability to deliver strong long-term earnings growth. I'll speak more about those things in a moment.
In addition to growing earnings per share, last week, Ameren's Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend increase of approximately 6%, resulting in an annualized dividend rate of $2.84 per share. This represents our 12th consecutive year of increasing our dividend, which reflects continued confidence by Ameren's Board of Directors in our business outlook and management's ability to execute our strategy.
Looking ahead, we expect to grow our dividend in-line with our long-term earnings per share growth expectations and for our dividend payout ratio to range from 55% to 65% of earnings per share. Combined, these elements support our strong total shareholder return proposition.
Turning to Page 10 for more on the foundation of our earnings outlook. Our strong long-term earnings growth expectation is driven by robust rate base growth, reflecting investment in energy infrastructure included in Ameren Missouri Smart Energy Plan, which incorporates its preferred resource plan, Ameren Illinois' multi-year rate plan and projects awarded to Ameren in MISO's long-range transmission planning.
Today, we are rolling forward our five-year investment plan. And as you can see, we expect to grow our rate base at a 9.2% compound annual rate from 2024 through 2029. This robust rate base growth is driven by a 20% increase in our five-year capital plan compared to the previous capital plan laid out last February, primarily reflecting accelerated generation needed to serve our updated sales growth expectations.
Now turning to Page 11 for more detail on the growth opportunities in Missouri driving the significant increase in our capital plan. We expect tremendous opportunities for economic growth over the next five to seven years. Our region's economy spans multiple sectors from aviation, biotechnology, chemicals, financial services, beverage and food manufacturing, life and plant sciences to healthcare and logistics and a variety of other manufacturing concerns. And increasingly, it is an attractive location for data centers. Based on our robust economic development pipeline, we are now expecting our weather-normalized retail sales to increase approximately 5.5% compounded annually from 2025 through 2029 compared to our prior plan expectations of flat-to-up 0.5%. This sales growth expectation is consistent with the notice we filed with the Missouri Public Service Commission of our intention to update our preferred resource plan. That plan assumes approximately 500 megawatts of load growth by the end of 2027, a total of 1 gigawatt by the end of 2029 and 1.5 gigawatts by the end of 2032.
Since our 3rd-quarter earnings call, we assigned additional construction agreements with data center developers for 1.5 gigawatts of new load to be interconnected to our transmission system, bringing our total to approximately 1.8 gigawatts. These construction agreements Are subject to acceptance of a modified industrial tariff under which new customers would receive energy service. Earlier this week, we submitted the necessary transmission load requests related to these agreements to MISO for expedited project review and expect approval in April. Further, we are actively working to propose a modified tariff for large industrial customers, including data center customers, and, and we expect to file for approval of the tariff with the Missouri Public Service Commission by the second-quarter. While there is no deadline for commission approval, we are optimistic we'd receive a decision and that the tariff would be in effect before the end-of-the year. We remain aligned with key stakeholders across the state in our efforts to attract new businesses to the region. Our economic development pipeline beyond our current construction agreements remains robust and we will continue to pursue each opportunity vigorously to maximize value for our customers and communities. As the green shading on our slide indicates, a range of sales growth outcomes could ultimately occur. But based on our planned generation resource build-out, we expect to have the capacity to serve 2 gigawatts of new demand by 2032 and even more thereafter. Moving then to Page 12 for an update on Missouri's generation plans. Considering the significant sales growth potential, the lead-time needed to construct new-generation and other key considerations. Ameren Missouri notified the Missouri PSC that we are changing the preferred resource plan in our September 2023 IRP, which lays out generation -- our generation plan for the next 20 years. As mentioned, our new preferred plan is designed to serve 1.5 gigawatts of additional demand by 2032 and as I mentioned, it provides for a range of outcomes. The key objectives of our resource planning remain the same, a balanced mix of resources to provide reliable, lowest-cost and cleaner energy for our customers. Our preferred plan calls for acceleration and expansion of natural gas generation and battery storage, acceleration of solar generation investment, potential extension of the life of our Siou Energy Center by up to three years and investment in additional nuclear generation by 2040. In total, the change in preferred plan represents the addition of 2.3 gigawatts of generation capacity by 2035 and when factoring in updated costs for all planned resources, represents approximately $7 billion of increased investment by 2035 compared to the 2023 IRP. Our execution of this investment plan will lay the foundation for reliable economic expansion in Missouri. For further details on the differences between the preferred resource plan from the 2023 IRP and new 2025 preferred resource plan, see Page 31 of this presentation. Turning to Page 13 for an update on the new-generation recently placed in-service or under development. This past year was just a start to the robust generation portfolio additions. Three new solar facilities totaling 500 megawatts and representing approximately $1 billion of investment were placed in-service during the 4th-quarter of 2024 as planned. Combined, the three facilities are expected to generate energy sufficient to power 92,000 homes annually and we continue to execute our IRP. We have another 1,200 megawatts of approved generation currently under-construction. And we expect to file requests with the Missouri PSC for approval of additional generation and battery energy storage in the coming months. Moving now to Page 14 for a transmission update. In December, MISO approved a nearly $22 billion Tranche 2.1 portfolio, which is expected to provide significant reliability and capacity benefits for the region. MISO has already selected Ameren to lead $1.3 billion worth of these critical grid infrastructure projects in Missouri and Illinois. The portfolio also includes $6.5 billion of projects, which will be open for competitive bid, of which approximately $1.8 billion are in Illinois. We believe we are well-positioned to compete for all these opportunities as we have a strong track-record of developing and operating cost-effective and high-quality transmission infrastructure. MISO and its transmission owners will continue to assess the current long-range transmission future scenarios to support our region's energy needs in the years ahead. This analysis is expected to be followed by development of the Tranche 2.2 project portfolio. Moving to Page 15 for a legislative update. In January, the Missouri legislative session began. Several bills are currently under consideration, including the Power Predictability and Reliability Act, the Missouri First Transmission Act, proposed modifications to integrated resource planning and the opportunity for future test year regulatory frameworks for natural gas and water utilities. While these bills are at various stages in the legislative process, they collectively demonstrate Missouri's commitment to enabling a reliable and efficient energy future and supporting economic growth and job creation within our communities. Ameren will remain actively engaged with policymakers and key stakeholders in the months ahead to advocate for constructive energy policy. Turning to Page 16 for an update on our 10-year investment pipeline. Looking ahead, we have a robust pipeline of investment opportunities of over $63 billion that will deliver significant value to all of our stakeholders by making our energy grid more reliable, stronger and smarter. In addition, these investments will support many thousands of jobs within our local economies. Of course, constructive energy policies that support robust investment in energy infrastructure will be critical to meeting our region's energy needs and delivering on our customers' expectations. Turning now to Page 17, to sum-up our value proposition. We remain convinced that the execution of our strategy in 2025 and beyond will continue to deliver superior value to our customers and shareholders. Our earnings growth expectations are driven by strong compound annual rate base growth of 9.2% and strategic allocation of infrastructure investment to each of our business segments based on their regulatory frameworks. Investment in Ameren presents an attractive opportunity for those seeking a high-quality utility growth story. Combined, our strong long-term 6% to 8% earnings growth plan and an attractive and growing dividend result in a compelling total return story. Further, we have a strong track-record of execution and an experienced management team. I'm confident in Ameren's team's ability to execute our investment plans and other elements of our strategy across all four of our business segments. Again, thank you all for joining us today, and I'll now turn the call over to Michael.
