CMS Energy Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

AlphaStreet
Provided by AlphaStreet
February 6, 2025
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Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the CMS Energy 2024 Year-End Results. The earnings news release issued earlier today and the presentation used in this webcast are available on CMS Energy's website in the Investor Relations section. This call is being recorded. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time.

If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press the star key followed by zero. Just a reminder, there will be a rebroadcast of this conference call today beginning at 12 p.m. Eastern Time running through February 13. This presentation is also being webcast and is available on CMS Energy's website in the Investor Relations section. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr Jason Shaw, Treasurer and Vice-President of Investor Relations.

Jason M. Shore
Treasurer and Vice President, Investor Relations at CMS Energy

Thank you, Harry. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. With me are Garrick, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Reggie Hayes, Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer. This presentation contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties.

Please refer to our SEC filings for more information regarding the risks and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially. This presentation also includes non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly-comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix and posted on our website. And now, I'll turn the call over to Garrett.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Thank you, Jason, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. In the words of James Brown, I feel-good CMS Energy, 22 years of consistent industry-leading financial performance every year for over two decades, you can count on us to deliver. We do that through our simple but powerful investment thesis, coupled with disciplined execution across our electric and gas businesses.

We take our legacy of service and excellence seriously at CMS Energy. We play to win every day. We have a lot to celebrate about 2024. And today, I will highlight a few key successes among many to demonstrate how we deliver for all of our stakeholders year-in and year out. First, our work to improve customer reliability, our five-year reliability roadmap, which we filed in 2023, set bold commitments to improve service to our customers to never have more than 100,000 customers disrupted per event and have service restored within 24 hours. And we are making progress.

In 2024, we restored power to over 93% of customers within 24 hours compared with 87% in 2023 and the average customer experienced 21 fewer power outage minutes. And although there is still more work to do, it is clear the investments are making a meaningful difference. I'm also pleased with the Work on the electric supply-side. In November, we filed our 20-year renewable energy plan. This critical long-term filing highlights the thoughtful changes we will make to our generation portfolio as we transform our system for more renewables and a diversified mix that includes nine gigawatts of solar and 4 gigawatts of wind over the next two decades. This filing details to the commission our commitment to leading the clean-energy transformation in achieving the targets established in Michigan's 2023 energy law. Most importantly, it demonstrates our commitment to diversify the energy portfolio and invest in supply infrastructure to serve our customers with reliable and clean-energy in the most affordable manner. And of course, our gas business continues to grow. I'm extremely proud of our coworkers' efforts to build and replace infrastructure that ensures a safe, reliable and clean natural gas system. The system has proven invaluable to customers throughout the year and even more recently in the extreme cold experienced in January. I could give many more examples and some are listed on this slide, which speak to the winning program at CMS Energy and are further proof points of our investment thesis in action, ensuring you can count on us to deliver value for all stakeholders every year. On Slide 5, we've highlighted our five-year $20 billion utility customer investment plan, up $3 billion from our prior plan, a significant and needed increase designed to deliver better customer service through improved reliability, both in distribution and supply. Driven largely by our reliability roadmap as we bolster our electric distribution system and by investments in our supply portfolio as we expand our renewable pipeline to meet the energy law. This plan supports 8.5% rate base growth through 2029. In addition to the robust customer investment plan, we have growth drivers outside traditional rate base. These are important and sometimes overlooked. So let me spend a moment here. The financial compensation mechanism, which allows us to earn on PPAs grows during the five-year period, offering approximately $20 million of incentives by the end-of-the decade and continues to grow thereafter as we secure additional PPAs. There's more than $60 million per year of incentives through our energy efficiency programs, enhanced by the energy law. We also expect incremental earnings from our non-utility business, North Star Clean Energy, as we continue to see attractive pricing from capacity and energy sold at Dearborn Industrial Generation or DIG. I want to take a moment to highlight the long runway of customer investments, which are incremental to our five-year plan and give us confidence in our financial performance and continued growth of our company. Slide 6 shows the detailed filings we expect over the next 10 years and beyond, which will be incorporated into future five-year updates. On the slide, you can see key investments in the electric distribution system to improve reliability for our customers through rebuilds, undergrounding, hardening and technology, $10 billion of opportunity not in the five-year plan. In the middle of the slide, the renewable energy plan, an ambitious and thoughtful plan to achieve 60% renewables by 2035 as required by the energy law and in response to significant low-growth in our service area, providing for additional wind and solar resources, $10 billion of opportunity, not in the five-year plan. And finally, the 2026 integrated resource Plan filing, which will shore up the intermittency of renewables, build-out battery storage and deploy clean-energy required under the energy law. The modeling for this filing is underway and will provide additional customer investment opportunities. All together, well over $20 billion that is not in the five-year plan. Now let's talk about our formula to keep rates affordable for our customers to accommodate these needed investments. You know our track-record. You've heard me share in the past about our deliberate and sharp focus on taking cost-out, whether it is episodic cost-savings through plant closures or renegotiating PPAs, operating our plants better than the market, leveraging the CEWA for process improvement, the use of digital technologies to improve efficiency or strong economic development. I'm confident in our ability to keep bills affordable while delivering on the needed customer investments, ensuring every dollar is maximized and adds value. Speaking of economic development, I've said it before, Michigan is in a renaissance of growth. Our five-year plan now incorporates the significant economic development we are seeing with upwards of 2% to 3% annual load growth. We feel really good about the quality of growth we are -- we see materializing across our service area and the state, both data centers and manufacturing load. While we see a nice mix coming to the state, the manufacturing growth brings with it jobs, supply chains, commercial activity, housing starts and residential growth, which allows us to couple customer investments with affordability as we spread fixed costs over a large -- larger customer-base. We are committed to growing Michigan and we are pleased with what we've contracted and the now 9 gigawatt pipeline of opportunities not yet in the plan. We work hard every day-to win our customers' business and we are honored when businesses cede the value in investing in our state and our service area. Jumping to Michigan's regulatory environment, we continue to see a strong and supportive energy policy that ensures timely recovery of investments and incentives above and beyond stated ROEs, as well as constructive regulatory planning mechanismslike renewable energy plants, integrated resource plans and investment recovery mechanisms that streamline the rate case process. In 2024, we delivered successful outcomes in our electric rate case, settled our fourth consecutive gas rate case and saw support for our distribution investments through the Liberty audit. For 2025, we expect a constructive outcome in our electric rate case with an order by the end of March. Our gas rate case is in the early innings, but we expect good support for the needed investments to keep our system safe. And as I shared earlier, our renewable energy plan with an expected outcome in late Q3 of 2025 is something to look-forward to given the large amount of renewables needed to meet the energy law and the growing demand we're seeing across our service area. Now on to the financials. We delivered adjusted earnings per share of $3.34 toward the high-end of our guidance range. For 2025, as you might expect, we are raising our 2025 guidance off 2024 actuals from $3.52 to $3.58 to $3.54 to $3.60, which represents 6% to 8% growth and we continue to guide towards the high-end. We also continue our long-standing tradition of compounding off actuals, providing our investors with a higher-quality of earnings. Longer-term, we continue to guide toward the high-end of our adjusted EPS growth range of 6% to 8%, which implies and includes 7% up to 8%. Our dividend policy remains unchanged. We continue to target a dividend payout ratio of about 60% over-time. With that, I'll hand the call over to Reggie.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Thank you, Garrick, and good morning, everyone. As Garrick highlighted, we delivered strong financial performance in 2024 with adjusted net income of $998 million, which translates to $3.34 per share and towards the high-end of our guidance range. The key drivers of our 2024 financial performance included constructive regulatory outcomes, a solid beat at North Star, cost performance Fueled by the CE Way and a variety of non-operational countermeasures, which more than offset the many challenges we saw throughout the year. For the second year in a row, we experienced significant weather-related financial headwinds, primarily in the form of mild winter temperatures in the first and fourth quarters. In fact, per our records in 2024, we had the warmest winter in the last 25 years based on heating degree days. Yet despite these challenges, we managed to offset the weather-driven headwinds without compromising our commitments to our customers, communities or coworkers. To elaborate on the strength of our financial performance in 2024. On Slide 11, you'll note that we met or exceeded all of our key financial objectives for the year. To avoid being repetitive, I'll just note that we successfully invested $3.3 billion as per our original guidance to make our electric and gas systems safer, more reliable and cleaner on behalf of our 3 million customers at the utility. We managed to do this while funding the business in a cost-efficient manner largely through operating cash-flow, well-priced bonds at the utility and tax credit transfers in the inaugural year of this new financing vehicle. This funding strategy enabled us to maintain our solid investment-grade credit metrics and associated ratings as affirmed by each of the rating agencies over the course of the year, most recently by S&P in December. Moving to our 2025 EPS guidance, on Slide 12, you'll note the rebasing of our 2025 adjusted EPS guidance off of actuals. For additional clarity, our 2025 adjusted EPS guidance increased by $0.02 per share on the low and high-ends of the range, commensurate with the amount by which our 2024 adjusted EPS of $3.34 exceeded the midpoint of last year's EPS guidance range. Our increased 2025 EPS guidance implies 6% to 8% growth with continued confidence toward the high-end of the range, as Garrick noted. As you can see in the segment details, our EPS growth will primarily be driven by the utility, providing $4.01 to $4.05 of adjusted earnings as we plan for normal weather, constructive rate case outcomes and earned returns at or near authorized levels. At North Star, we're assuming an EPS contribution of $0.18 to $0.22, which incorporates a planned maintenance -- maintenance outage at DIG, offset by ongoing contributions from North Star's clean-energy business. Lastly, our financing assumptions remain conservative at the parent segment with the expectation of approximately $1.3 billion of new HoldCo long-term debt and up to $500 million of equity to support the increased capital plan at the utility. Our 2025 guidance also assumes the absence of liability management transactions. To elaborate on the glide path to achieve our 2025 adjusted EPS guidance range, you'll see the usual waterfall chart on Slide 13. For clarification purposes, all of the variance analyses herein are measured on a full-year basis and are relative to 2024. From left to right, we'll plan for normal weather, which in this case amounts to $0.39 per share of positive variance given the expected absence of the atypically mild winter temperatures experienced in 2024. Additionally, we anticipate $0.21 of EPS payup attributable to rate relief by the residual benefits of last year's successful gas rate case settlement and the expectation of constructive outcomes in our pending electric and gas rate cases. Outside of the general rate cases, we also expect to see earnings contributions from our renewable investments as construction of these projects progress. As always, our rate relief figures are stated net of investment-related costs such as depreciation, property taxes and utility interest expense. As we turn to the cost structure in 2025, you will note $0.03 per share of positive variance due to the anticipation of continued productivity driven by the CE Way. We also expect a healthy reduction in operating expenses attributable to the closure of our remaining coal units midyear, which will be largely offset by increases to vegetation management and other electric reliability -- reliability-related cost categories, all of which align with our pending electric rate case. Lastly, in the penultimate bar on the right-hand side, you'll note a significant negative variance, which largely consists of the reversal of select countermeasures in 2024 and expected capital costs associated with the aforementioned parent financings. We're also including the usual conservative assumptions around weather-normalized sales and taxes among other items. In aggregate, these assumptions equate to $0.37 to $0.43 per share of negative variance. As always, we'll adapt to changing conditions throughout the year to mitigate risks and deliver our operational and financial objectives to the benefit of customers and investors. On Slide 14, we have a summary of our near and long-term financial objectives. As Garrick noted, from a dividend policy perspective, we're targeting a payout ratio of about 60% and anticipate remaining in that area over the course of our five-year plan. Given the elevated cost of cap of capital environment and the breadth and depth of customer investment opportunities before us, we continue to believe that it is prudent to retain more earnings to fund growth. From a balance sheet perspective, we continue to target solid investment-grade credit ratings and we'll continue to manage our key credit metrics accordingly as we balance the needs of the business. As such, we intend to resume our at-the-money, at-the-market or ATM equity issuance program in the amount of up to $500 million in 2025, as mentioned earlier. We expect this level of equity issuance to trend down in the outer years of our plan as we increase the size of our tax credit transfer program given the substantial renewable build-out underway in accordance with Michigan's energy law. Lastly, we also expect select large multi-year economic development projects to begin coming online in 2025, yielding approximately 1% weather-normalized load growth for the year with run-rate assumptions of 2% to 3% in the outer years of our plan as other large projects come online. Slide 15 provides a look into the historical performance and estimated growth of North Star's DIG facility with upside potential beyond 2026 as capacity prices in Zone 7 continue to increase. Given the rising cost of new entry, we have updated the potential range of outcomes accordingly, as you can see in the bars on the far right-hand side of the chart. We remain bullish on the opportunities in the bilateral market for DIG and will continue our strategy of layering in contracts over-time. Slide 16 offers more specificity on the funding needs in 2025 at the utility and the parent. The only additional financings I mentioned for the year are the planned debt issuances at the utility, which we anticipate being a little over $1.1 billion. It is also worth noting that we have not assumed the issuance of any junior subordinated notes, also known as hybrids in our 2025 financing plan or in our five-year plan, which offers a potential opportunity if we see attractive price points in the market. Needless to say, we'll remain opportunistic throughout the year. On Slide 17, we have refreshed our sensitivity analysis on key variables for your modeling assumptions. As you'll note, with reasonable planning assumptions and our track-record of risk mitigation, the probability of large variances from our plan is minimized. Our model has served and will continue to serve all stakeholders well. Our customers receive safe, reliable and clean-energy at affordable prices. Our diverse and battle-tested workforce remains committed to our purpose-driven organization and our investors benefit from consistent industry-leading financial performance. And with that, I'll hand it back to Garrick for his final remarks before the Q&A session.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Thank you, Reggie. I'll finish where I started and with James Brown. I feel-good. But I can't hold a tune, so instead, I'll finish like this. 22 years, 22 proof points of consistent industry-leading financial performance, providing you with predictability and strong growth, compounding off actuals, which very few do in our sector, providing you with a higher-quality of earnings.

We had a great 2024. We remain confident in our strong outlook for 2025 and beyond as we continue to execute on our simple investment thesis and make the necessary and important investments in our system while maintain customer affordability. With that, Harry, please open the lines for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you very much, Garrick. The question-and-answer

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Operator

Session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question, please do so by pressing the star key followed by the digit one on your touchtone telephone. If you're using a speaker function, please make sure you pick-up your headset. We'll proceed in the order you signal us and we'll take as many questions as time permits.

If you do find that your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the star key followed by the DIGIT 2 on your touchdown telephone. And we'll now pause for just a second. Our first question today will be from the line of Julien with Jefferies. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Julien Dumoulin Smith
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Hey, good morning, team. Nicely done. Thanks again for the time. Appreciate it. Hey,

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Good morning, Julie.

Julien Dumoulin Smith
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Let me kick it off here. Hey, good morning. Thank you. Look, let me just kick it off on something a little bit more timely here. Just with respect to the permitting, you guys have a lot going on the renewable front. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the ability to execute in this environment, you guys specifically have wind in your outlook.

I'm just curious to get your thoughts here, just given some of the backdrop here on the ability to execute and especially given the permitting regime has been something of a conversation in recent times and your geography, then I'll pivot back to some of the financials.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Well, the team is doing some amazing work and from a pipeline perspective, both on wind and solar. And I'll just give you some context of that before I jump into kind of the administration -- kind of federal administration piece. We just finished up a wind project in late last year, which was very successful. We got two large solar projects underway, our solar projects, 250 megawatts. We just announced this last week, 360 megawatts we're building in South -- Southwest Michigan. And so and this team has got a long pipeline. So this whole permitting thing here's a secret to it and it's not much of a secret.

It's being on-the-ground, right? It's working with the locals and the local townships, local communities to get acceptance for the projects and the tax dollars that come with those projects. It's working with landowners. That's been our -- that's been our success. And so when it comes to specifically wind in this administration, that's particularly aimed at federal lands.

We're not doing anything offshore and we're not doing anything on federal land, it's all private. And that's where our point of success is. And so we do see -- we do see an opportunity for future wind projects. In many cases, it's been repowering, it's expansion within existing parks and there's a couple of new projects that are underway and under consideration.

But I feel-good about our ability to build-out these renewables. And then remember always that this renewable energy plan is -- it's an iteration. So if I got to make an adjustment in a year, we'll do that. And so that's what gives me a lot of confidence about our future and ability to continue to deliver on this important customer investment agenda?

Julien Dumoulin Smith
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Awesome. Excellent. Thank you for that. I know that a lot of folks are kind of curious to understand exactly how that gets implemented, if you will. But pivoting back to the financials, I mean, obviously, very nicely done here. Thank you for the updates on the load growth front. I mean, can you speak a little bit to what the legislation does and especially could do prospectively? You kind of alluded it in broader terms. Can you speak a little bit more specifically in terms of what the contribution is in the 2% to 3% and what the big moving factors could be, especially subsequent to legislation, which was fairly recent, right, in terms of the -- what's reflected in that to three?

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Are you, are you talking about state legislation? Just to clarify your question,

Julien Dumoulin Smith
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Julien? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, apologies. I'm thinking about the sort of the data center avenue. And to what extent is that reflected in that to three? And again, is it just a little bit too nascent given how recently some of the stuff materialized?

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah. So I want to be really clear about our sales growth and this is exciting piece because it's evident in our renewable energy plan that we filed in November. It's part of our five -- our five-year plan that we're talking about today. This 2% to 3% load growth is not a pipeline, it's not hypotheticals. This is stuff that's contracted. We have a high confidence that we're building substations to support some of this load starts to come on in '25 and then continues out throughout '29 in this five-year plan. So there's a lot of -- there's a high degree of confidence about this 2% to 3%. That's the important piece.

And then if you look-forward, there's a nine-gigawatt pipeline. And for several quarters ago, I talked about that pipeline. It was smaller, it's grown and it's shifted a little bit to more data centers. It's about 65-ish percent data centers now, the rest is manufacturing and that's in-part due to this legislation passing, the sales and use tax.

So that passed at the end-of-the year. The governor just signed it mid-January. And so we're starting to see a nice uplift there. And you hear like you've heard Microsoft acquiring land, we're working with other hyperscalers as well. And so, and you've also heard about a semiconductor project in Genese County. There's a lot of energy here, no pun intent, a lot of excitement about the sales growth here, both what we've secured and that pipeline. And so I'm excited about Michigan.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah, Julian, all I would add to Garrick's comments is when you think about the 2% to 3%, just to give you additional specificity, we've got multiple projects embedded in that, I would say six or seven larger ones and it's well-diversified. So data centers are represented in that mix. But again, there's a lot of non-datacenter activities we've talked about for some time. Just given the attractiveness of Michigan. Remember, it's not just competitive rates.

We've also got obviously good fiber network. We've got really good access to fresh water, which is attractive for a lot of these manufacturing businesses because they do include water in their processes. And we've got a lot of energy-ready sites because we've been doing the hard work for many years now, not just over the past couple of years.

So we are well-prepared to welcome these opportunities into Michigan and the opportunities embedded in that 2% to 3% in our five-year plan, those are either signed or imminently signed. So again, there's not a whole lot of beta around those opportunities. The one thing I would circle back to on your question about the permitting is that as Garrick noted, all of the projects that we're executing on are on private lands.

And as I understand it, the private lands are also to some extent in the crosshairs a bit. But I think that that's also centered on wetlands associated with private property. Again, none of our projects are situated in wetlands that could be subject to federal regulations. So again, to Garrick's comments, we feel very good about our fact pattern with respect to permitting and the associated build-out of renewables over-time.

Julien Dumoulin Smith
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

All right. Excellent guys. I'll leave it there. See you guys soon, right all the best.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Take care, Julian.

Operator

The next question will be from the line of Jeremy with J.P. Morgan. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Morning, Jeremy.

Jeremy Tonet
Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities

Hi, good morning. I just wanted to dive in a little bit, if I could, with regards to, I guess, how you feel about the regulatory environment in Michigan. There's been some concern in the marketplace with recent orders and figured that it would be good just to hear from you guys how you think about things at these days.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Jeremy, you like sausage? I mean I love breakfast sausage. I got to tell you this. I gotta tell you this. Like a breakfast burrito, an. I love seasoned sausage. But the reality is like I don't like how sausage is made. No one wants to see how sausage is made. And I think that's the challenge. Everybody is getting wrapped around the axle about the Michigan regulatory environment and that's just the nuances of the mark of the environment. You got the pluses and deltas, everybody is paying attention to it, but the bottom-line is.

The bottom-line is we get constructive outcomes, 2022, 2023, remind you of '24, like successful electric outcome, a consistent -- our fourth consecutive gas settlement. We'll get a constructive outcome in this electric rate case. And so like, yeah, there's this push and pull that goes on within the regulatory environment, but I'm not here ringing my hands. We -- like our job is to sweat the sweat the small stuff. That's what we do. We sweat the small stuff. We work-through the commission process and we get constructive outcomes.

And so when we're out there talking about 6% to 8% toward the high-end and this consistency and predictability that our investors can count on, it's because we sweat it day-in and day-out. So bottom-line, we work-through all that at the commission and we get the good outcomes. And I think that's the bottom-line, Jeremy.

Jeremy Tonet
Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities

Got it. Sausage. Understood. Just wanted to go if I could pivot to dig for a second here. It seems like -- I think you mentioned outage. I'm just wondering how much of a headwind that is for EPS this year, if you could quantify that.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Well, first of all, I'll let Red walk-through the numbers on that. But the teams did -- this were just like any major outage. We do this every seven, eight years. Teams prepared, ready to execute, materials are all there. And so we've talked about this last year and this is part of the plan this year and it's -- there's some renewables that are part of the mix that help with the EPS -- EPS numbers and contribution from Northstar.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah. I think summarized it well, Jeremy. So yeah, we'll probably lose about a little less or rather a little more than 50% of DIG's contribution in prior years, but that will be offset by contributions from existing operating assets. Remember, we do have a thermal generation fleet beyond DIG. We also have existing renewable projects such as the Aviator project and others. And then we also do have some multi-year projects that are underway that we expect to achieve commercial operation date or COD in the second-half of this year. And so It's a combination of additional contributions from new and existing operating assets. And so that should offset DIG's contribution this year.

Jeremy Tonet
Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities

Right. I guess I was just thinking, I mean, guidance might have been even higher if not for this turnaround, but understood your points there. That's we

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

-- yeah, outages are reality of the business. So unfortunately, this year, we'll have a modest dig divid. But in the subsequent years, we expect to see additional growth, which we highlighted on Slide 15 in the materials.

Jeremy Tonet
Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities

Got it. Thanks.

Operator

The next question today will be from the line of Michael Sullivan with Wolfe Research. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Steven Fleishman
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Hey, good morning. Hey, hey Garrick. I didn't eat breakfast, so you're making me a little hungry

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

I usually keep it for the weekend like I can't trigger myself all-the-time. I got to wait for you.

Steven Fleishman
Analyst at Wolfe Research

There you go. I actually wanted to start with Reggie, just on the financing side. So do you mind just maybe bridging us a little bit from the $3 billion capex increase to what you increased on the equity side because it seems like maybe a little bit less than what we would have otherwise expected in terms of equity need. How much is maybe tied to tax credit transferability? Any additional color there would be helpful.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah, happy to provide some information on that, Michael, and I appreciate the question as always. So as you may recall, in the past, we've talked about this sensitivity between every dollar of capital investment funded by about $0.35 to $0.40 of common equity at the HoldCo. And that's about where we are if you just think about the glide path from this vintage we've just rolled-out today of a five-year plan versus the prior.

And so to give you specific numbers, we're up $3 billion vintage over vintage of aggregate capex. And so that implies about another $120 million or so of equity. The prior plan had up to $350 million of equity starting this year. And so you add $120 million on-top of that, you start to get-in that $500 million range.

And that's what we expect from an equity issuance perspective over the next two to three years. And then as we get to the outer year, outer years of this plan, it does step-down and that's why I said on a long-term basis, the average will be about $450 million. And what you see is we do have -- we're expecting about $85 million or so roughly of tax credit monetizations this year, but that will step-up over the course of this five-year plan as we execute on more renewable projects to comply with the energy law.

And so we expect over $700 million of tax credit transfers in aggregate over the course of this five-year plan and that compares favorably versus the expectations in the prior five-year plan, which was closer to over -- little over $0.5 billion. So that tax credit ramp-up or that tax credit transfer ramp-up is really what's driving down the equity needs in the outer years of plan. And I would say in the front of the plan, pretty directly consistent with our historical sensitivity between capex and equity needs.

Steven Fleishman
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thank you. Okay. That's really helpful. And my second question, I'm going to stick with you here, Reggie. In terms of the liability management side, how do you think about if there's more to potentially do if necessary. And I know you didn't bake it into the plan, but if weather is mild again for the second or third year in a row, are there more levers to pull on that front? And then maybe if I could also tie-in like again where you were conservative without baking in any hybrid issuances, like is that available to you currently, you think and just wanted to be really conservative? Yeah, just trying to think about where you have some of the flex.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Absolutely. And so I would say with respect to liability management, certainly, that was a very helpful tool in the toolkit over the course of '24 and 2023, I'd remind you. And so we did lean into those. I think the benefits are several fold. I mean, obviously, we want to peg them to weather.

And so we'd have to see what weather does over the course of the year if we were going to go down that path because we view opportunities like that as transitory like weather. So we would want to peg them to weather. But I would say given our utilization of those over the past couple of years, I'd say there's certainly more opportunities there, but we'd have to see where interest rates go. I mean, right now, it certainly makes the environment hospitable because rates have remained range-bound and fairly high, which creates the discounts on extinguishments that drive the gains.

But again, we'd have to see where weather trends. And needless to say, I'm going on year eight here at CMS. And as we've said before, we don't discriminate when it comes to the cost structure. And so we look broadly, whether that's tax planning, whether that's operational O&M related flex, whether that's the CE way.

We will continue to look throughout the cost structure and execute on levers wherever we find them. And that's why we've been successful for so many years now. It's just staying paranoid, identifying risk, quantifying risk and making sure we have opportunities that exceed the risk. And so that's what we'll do going-forward. That's the playbook, and I don't see us deviating from that. Transitioning to the question around hybrids, certainly, that's an opportunity as I think we may have talked about in the past.

The real limitations there is, obviously we'll see where market conditions are, but it seems like there's pretty good depth and appetite for junior subordinated note paper in the market. We saw some issuances recently and at pretty interesting levels and there was quite a bit of activity last year, I think catalyzed by Moody's increasing the equity credit they ascribed to hybrid in Q1 of last year. So certainly an opportunity. And we were doing those long before that was -- that became a thing. And so I'd say it represents less than 10% of our book capitalization.

There's a threshold by S&P at 15%. And so that gives us about $3 billion of additional capacity to do hybrids. And so again, it's a tool in the tool kit. We'll be opportunistic if we see the right pricing and that can allow us to do both credit and EPS accretive deals from a financing perspective versus plan. We'll certainly look to do that.

Steven Fleishman
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Really appreciate it. Very helpful. Thank you.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Thank you.

Operator

The next question will be from the line of Andrew Wisell with Scotiabank. Please go-ahead. Your line is open

Andrew Weisel
Analyst at Scotia Howard Weill

Good morning, Andrew. Hey, good morning, everyone. You covered a lot of areas. Just one quick thing I wanted to clarify on the dividend. The pace of the increase has decelerated those past couple of years. I wanted to just understand the payout ratio for 2025 should be right around your target at 61% based on the midpoint of guidance.You obviously tend to beat the guidance midpoints as we all know.

So my question is, looking to '26 and beyond, how should we think about the dividend growth? I understand it's a Board decision. Reggie, I think you made a comment about wanting to retain more earnings to finance growth. How should we think about the pace of dividend growth relative to earnings going-forward starting in next year.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah, I appreciate the question, Andrew. And I'll take a walk-down memory lane because as you may recall, when we sold Enerbank in 2021 and at the risk of sounding self-serving, boys that transaction aged well. We increased the growth rate at that time, and that's when we started going toward the high-end of 7% to 8% and we just thought it was prudent to decouple the dividend per share growth at that time from the EPS growth.

Also, we did have to rightsize it because we went up to like 65% payout, which we thought was not comparable versus our growth of your peers. And so at that point, we've been on this sort of glide path of DPS growth. It was initially sort of low 6%, it's now sort of 5% to 7% toward the low-end and that has made a lot of sense as we glide path down to a 60% payout ratio.

And just frankly, again, to your comment and my comment in my prepared remarks, retain more earnings so that we can redeploy those earnings into the utility growth and rate base growth. And so that will be our MO. As I look in the outer years, again, we'll probably have pretty consistent dividend per share increases. And so you'll see that growth kind of being the low 5% year-over-year. And I still think we'll be -- no, I think I anticipate us being sort of in that sort of low-60s, high-50s range for some time.

And to your comment, we'll obviously have to confirm that our Board is supportive of that year in and year out as we always do. But it should be around 60%. Again, it may be sort of the high-50s or thereabout, but I think that again is the most prudent use of capital in the current environment because we've got a breadth and depth of capex backlog that really warrants significant support from a funding perspective, and we just don't think it makes sense to sort of recycle the capital through the external markets. Why not just retain more and redeployed into the business? So that's going to be our MO for some time. Is that helpful, Andrew

Andrew Weisel
Analyst at Scotia Howard Weill

It is. I certainly don't disagree. I just wanted to make sure you're comfortable going into the 50s and it sounds like you are. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question will be from the line of Nicolas Campanello with Barclays. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Nicholas Campanella
Analyst at Barclays

Hey, good morning, and thanks for all the information. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, I just wanted to ask, just a follow-up to Jeremy's question a little bit further on like North Star and the big opportunities, just you've outlined some of the potential upside there, but to the extent that you have just better bilateral Opportunities that come down the pipeline that are incremental to that, is that still just a further extension of the 6 to 8% or would you kind of reevaluate at that time? Thanks.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah, I'm going to use three words, Nick, with which I think you're well familiar and our bias is always to strengthen the lengthen the plan. And so while there certainly may be additional opportunity with a roughly 25% open margin that we highlighted in the outer years of our plan, which could be recontracted at really attractive rates just given the tightening we continue to see in Zone 7, it just gives us additional opportunity to strengthen the length of the plan.

And I think it's worth reminding folks and Garrick highlighted this in his prepared remarks. I mean, remember, we compound off of actuals year in and year out. And so you really want to make sure that you've got enough support to do that because it gets harder every year-by definition. And so again, that's been our bias for some time and that would be the intent. As you can see on Slide 15 too, yes, there's open margin, there's a tightening market and there's additional opportunity, but it's also important to note, we did realize a good portion of that in this plan.

And so you can see in that bar that says 2026 through 2029, we've stepped-up the earnings power of DIG pretty handsomely by again contracting at really attractive rates. And so there's still additional opportunity on the outside looking in, but we did realize a good portion of that in this plan. Let me stop there and see if there are any further questions beyond

Nicholas Campanella
Analyst at Barclays

That. No, hey, that's helpful. And then I guess my only follow-up is on the REP, like I know it's early, but just is this something that you expect to take the full distance or is there a settlement potential opportunity in there too?

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

We'll always look for settlement opportunities. And this renewable energy plan would be more similar to the integrated resource plan. We've had success in settling integrated resource plans. And so again, I would look for settlement opportunities in a renewable energy plan. But at the latest, it will go into the Q3 of Q3 of the year. And again, it's a good plan, got confidence and taken the whole way if need be.

Nicholas Campanella
Analyst at Barclays

All right. Thanks a lot. See you soon.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Thanks.

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Chopra Dougus with Evercore. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Durgesh Chopra
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Hey, team, good morning. Thanks for the discussion today. Hey, good morning, Gary. And all my other questions have been answered. Just one big fixed question on tariffs. If they -- if China tariffs are in effect now as you know and they stay on for a prolonged period of time, just thinking about how it impacts you, especially given you have a considerable amount of renewable investment in the plan.So maybe talk to your supply-chain, how you're derisking that? Just any color you could share there would be great. Thank you.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Really, the team has done great work. We've really done our homework here. So just let me talk through some numbers. So when we look at direct spend across our supply-chain. And we looked at it both Canada, Mexico and China. It's a little over 5% direct that it's coming from one of those three locations in the world. When we look at indirect spend, and so indirect, you're going with a company that might be US US-based, but they have spend in either, again, Mexico, Canada or China.

That's again a little over 5%. So we're talking about 10% to 12% of the overall supply-chain mix. And so it's small in the context of that. But to your point, we're actively working to mitigate that. And that's one, we've bumped up our supply stock a bit. Two, we've looked at how to migrate to other vendors that are US-based. That's a way to deal with it as well. So that's the supply-chain.

So I've got great confidence in our ability to execute the capital plan and keep builds affordable for our customers. Now the other piece is in electric and natural gas. So let me talk about that homework we've done as well because as part of MISO, there are -- Canada is part of the MISO mix. But remember this, given our natural gas plants, we're typically putting energy into the market. We've got great heat rates, got low-cost of incoming natural gas.

And that's a nice hedge. It saved our customers over a couple of hundred million dollars this year and we'll continue to use that a hedge if there is -- if there's any volatility or an increase in electric prices in the market. So really positioned well there. And then gas, we bought last year and this was a high for us. We bought about 6% of our gas from Canada. Again, and that was at a high.

And so remember, we have seven interconnects. And so I've got six other interconnects that I can leverage for US gas to be able to mitigate that. So again, I feel like I'm in a really good spot there or the company is in a really good spot from a tariff perspective for natural gas. And then finally, and I imagine we'll get this question over-time, when we look at it in some detail, is that often you start to think about other industries.

And so often with Michigan with our rich heritage on automotive, the question comes up, well, tariffs, how do they impact the automotive industry. And I will remind all our investors that a little over 2% of our gross margin is in the automotive space in Tier-1 and Tier-2. So we've got a very diversified service territory, which helps mitigate some of that risk that might show-up for the automotive industry.

And so a lot of detail there, a lot of data. You can tell we've done our homework, but feel like we can really manage and mitigate the impact to our customers. I know Reggie wants to get into this too.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah, Dukesh, all I would add to Garrick's dissertation is that for the avoidance of, we actually do not directly source any material from China. So as Garrick noted, we may have second or third derivative exposure like I think most global and diversified businesses on the planet do. But again, we do not directly source any material from China.

And the only other thing I mention is that we are obviously using the place in the CE way when we work with our vendors. And so we do have operating reviews with our vendors and we are working very actively with them to ask them the same questions you're asking us. What are they doing to mitigate the risk of tariffs? We're making sure that our contracts with our vendors, particularly those who do have second or third derivative exposure to some of these locations that are in the crosshairs that there is the appropriate level of risk transfer or risk-sharing in our contracts. So we are doing work with our vendors just to make sure that we've got the right level of visibility on their manufacturing footprint and what -- and make sure we have clarity on what they're doing to mitigate these risks.

Durgesh Chopra
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Wow, guys. That's really comprehensive. Appreciate all the detail. That actually just prompted a follow-up question that I was just curious about, is there a way to think about your equipment and your supply-chain, how much of that is domestic versus international? Because my thought process is this is just not China, Canada, right? This might be -- the European Union might be next year and so just how to think about domestically versus internationally sourcing equipment and other things?

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Well, Durgesh, hopefully what you heard from our early response is, again, we sweat the details, right? So our investors don't have to worry. I mean that's the big message here. But just going back to those numbers like from a -- again, Canada, Mexico, China and certainly Reggi clarified the China piece. We're talking about an indirectly about 10% to 12% where there might be materials that are coming from -- from those three countries. And so again, most of it's US-based, which gives us a great deal of confidence in our ability to execute the plan.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah, Drakesh, all I would add is that we do principally source. Yeah, we do principally source most of our materials domestically. Some of them are internationally sourced, but most of them are domestic. And again, I think the key really operationally is it's really important to have a diversified vendor base and we've done that quite a bit.

On the solar side, we are sourcing domestically a lot of solar to derisk. We've been doing that for many years now, not over the past couple of months, last several years. And we've also broadened our footprint to sourcing from Southeast Asia with respect to solar modules and that's been really helpful as well. So again, we've really taken an all-the-above approach to make sure we're well-diversified and not subject to over-indexing or overconcentration in any particular area.

Durgesh Chopra
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Perfect. Thank you guys and congrats on the update here. Thanks.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Thank you.

Operator

The next question will be from the line of David Arcaro with Morgan Stanley. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

David Arcaro
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Hey, thanks so much.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

David good morning.

David Arcaro
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

I was curious on maybe the broader kind of Michigan backdrop for supporting data centers. And I was curious, is there excess transmission capacity as you see it in Michigan or in your own fleet of on the generation side? You have extra like buffer to absorb data center projects and some of this load that you're seeing?

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Well, I'll first start with Michigan. Michigan has been very supportive of both in the sales and use tax. And as mentioned in his earlier comments, we've worked closely with regional and state economic development organizations to help locate data centers as well as manufacturing facilities in Michigan. The biggest piece that we do and our economic development team does is help in the placement. And so there's not tons of excess transmission capacity out there, but there is advantages to where you locate in the state and we help along with the transmission provider Locate and try to position those across the state. And in some cases, it does require transmission build-out, requires distribution build-out. We try to make that small so that we're able to keep the cost-down, but also so we can do it in the time-frames that are expected. From a supply perspective, we feel-good about our supply mix. We're continuing that renewable energy plan incorporates that 2% to 3% growth. We're building out those additional renewables to meet the energy law, but also for that sales growth. When we do our integrated resource plan, we're going to again look at the needs there. So we have these filings to be able to build that out. But remember, out-of-the last IRP, integrated resource plan, we were at a -- at a surplus. And so we've been able to leverage that as well to be able to attract these businesses to Michigan. And so again, I feel-good about our ability to place them here and have the supply resources to meet that. And the final thing I'll add to it as well is, remember, these loads don't come on all at-once. And so there's timing pieces and we work with those companies. We know those timing pieces. And so for example, we've talked about this. We know that Switch, the data center, wants to be by 2026? Well, we're building that. We're constructing that now. They bring a little load on late '25 and we'll have it on by '26. And so we know all those, whether it's manufacturing

David Arcaro
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Late in the process, but are there opportunities here to still settle broadly your individual pieces before the finish line.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

I'm always open to settlement. You know that. But again the times the clock is ticking on this one and we've had the PFD and I would just offer this. Staff this staff is -- staff is a really constructive starting position on this. And I just as a reminder, like these are staff professionals, they do their homework, they've done a lot of due-diligence in this case, they put it in testimony. It's a nice constructive starting spot, which I have a lot of confidence in that.

And then you also add our experts who bring best practices and bring benchmarking to that. And so there's a nice blend that should occur between staff position and the company's position. But bottom-line, I have a lot of confidence we're going to get to a constructive outcome, whether it be settlement or probably more likely through a final order in March, we'll get to a constructive outcome that will be good for all stakeholders.

David Arcaro
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Okay, great. Thanks for all the updates.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Yeah, you bet, David

Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask any further questions, please dial star one now. And the next question will be from the line of Travis Miller with Morningstar. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Travis Miller
Analyst at Morningstar

Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Good morning. The -- hey, a quick clarification on the long-term opportunities. When you put the numbers, $10 billion on the reliability roadmap, $10 billion on the electric REP or other, are those opportunities that are simply outside the plan, i.e., year six through 10 or those opportunities that might come into the five-year plans?

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Right now, that $20 billion-plus of opportunities is outside or incremental to the five-year plan. As those filings progress, it's an opportunity to bring them into the five-year plan or to your point, add them in years six through 10. But as you can see, it's a rich opportunity from an investor standpoint, but they really needed customer investments needed from a reliability and resiliency of the system as we see higher wind speeds, as we see more frequent storms and higher customer expectations, we need to make those investments in the electric distribution system our customers.

And then the other one is and just in terms of the energy law, we have to have renewables in-place, 60% by 2035. Those are needed investments for cleaner air in compliance with this -- with the law as well as the supply growth.

Travis Miller
Analyst at Morningstar

Okay, great. And then the 2% to 3% electric growth, if you end-up realizing that type of growth, is there a chance that you could get off of that kind of one year rate case cadence maybe extended to two years? Is that a possibility as you run the numbers if you get that electric demand growth up?

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

We're confident that we're going to see that. So again, I go back to used the word if and I just want to make sure we're really clear about this. These are contracts, these are things where we're -- like if I take like corning, $900 million investment, 1,100 jobs, we're bringing on the -- we're building the substation now, bringing electric to serve them.

And so like these are being realized. I just want to give that level of confidence. Again, our approach, there's occasion where we stayed out for a year-on a rate case, but our strategy is really to be in there annually, to do smaller-type increases, to have an active dialogue with the commission. That's where we see the best outcomes and successful outcomes for our customers. And so I would anticipate that annual rate case cadence continues going-forward.

Rejji P. Hayes
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at CMS Energy

Okay, great. No, that's all very helpful to answer most of my other questions. I appreciate it.

Travis Miller
Analyst at Morningstar

Yeah, thank you.

Operator

With no further questions queued, I will now turn the call-back to Mr for some closing remarks.

Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy

Thanks, Harry. I'd like to thank you for joining us today. I look-forward to seeing you on the road this year. Take care and stay safe.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. We thank everyone for your participation

Corporate Executives
  • Jason M. Shore
    Treasurer and Vice President, Investor Relations
  • Garrick J. Rochow
    President and Chief Executive Officer
  • Rejji P. Hayes
    Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
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