00:002025 is a great year for us. We met every one of our targets that we set out. Really the efforts of the 26,000 teammates that we have here
00:08delivered above the midpoint on our earnings. We announced two transactions that are really going to strengthen our balance sheet for the growth
00:16that we have ahead of us. And we started construction on five gigawatts of new generation that's going to power the amazing growth that we're
00:24seeing across our territories. And we're really focused on making sure that we do all these things while maintaining affordability and low cost to our customers.
00:33We are all all our jurisdictions are below the national average in cost. And we continue to look for different tools on how we can manage those costs using tax credits, our
00:42continuous improvement culture, AI to lower costs to the customers. So really a great year in 2025. And as you mentioned, 2026 started off with cold weather.
00:53We haven't seen this kind of cold weather for this long in a long time. But the grid held up great. Our employees were
01:02prepared for the ice storm that we had. We had 200,000 customers lose power and we restored power to over 95% of them within 24
01:11hours. Just a testament to our employees, but also to the grid hardening that we've done in the strength of our system. 26 is shaping up to be a
01:20great year and we look forward to continuing our great work. I got to say it is very cold and my boiler went out on Saturday night,
01:29Harry. So, you know, we're burning fires and got space heaters everywhere. How does the grid look to you? I know you say it held up well, but what
01:37improvements need to be made? What do you think this country needs to invest in its electric grid electrical grid to keep up?
01:43Yeah, we're seeing two things. We're seeing weather be a lot more powerful and more frequent in storms.
01:52We had Hurricane Helene a couple of years ago, which was just devastating to our service territory. And we've been at grid
01:58hardening for several years, replacing wooden poles with concrete and steel poles that make it more hardy. Looking at technology, I call it
02:07GPS for the grid, self-optimizing technology that reroutes power automatically, that cuts down on the outages. Just last year, we saved 5.2
02:17million outages from that technology and we're expanding that across our system. So we're focused on making the grid
02:23hardened and reliable to handle those situations, but also expanding it for the tremendous growth that we're seeing with AI
02:30demand and population migration to the south in our territories. We've added almost 200,000 customers for three years
02:38running, which is just amazing, as well as businesses coming into the Carolinas and Florida. North Carolina was just recently named again for the third
02:46time in four years, the number one place to do business. We're seeing a lot of businesses come here. And then just last year, we
02:53announced four and a half gigawatts of data centers, contracts that will provide four and a half gigawatts of power on our grid, provide value to the
03:02communities they're bringing. And those folks were contracted to not affect the general population.
03:08Hey, Harry, can you get into that? How are you making sure? Because this is the hot button issue with AI data centers, right? That affordability
03:15is a problem. People are upset with energy bills going on. How are these structured, agreements structured, so everyday people aren't paying the cost of bringing these on the grid?
03:25Yeah, affordability is very important to us. It's always been important to us. And we've always worked to keep costs low. When we talk to these large load customers, we want to make sure they're paying their fair share. We have contract terms for minimum take payments that cover the investments that we're making for them. And in fact, every gigawatt that we sign up contractually will actually lower the cost to the customers over time over that 15 to 20 year contract by almost $800 million.
03:54So they are paying their share and also by spreading their costs over our fixed assets or reducing the cost to the customers over time.
04:03By the way, this is also affordability, very important to the Trump administration. They've made clear in the past couple of months. How have your talks with the administration gone? What do you want from them and what do they want from you?
04:16Yeah, affordability and reliability and speed to power are shared goals that we have with the administration. We've had many discussions with them. The one big, beautiful tax bill with our nuclear tax credits that we earn on our low cost, reliable nuclear units are providing $500 million a year in savings to our customers in the Carolinas.
04:36So continuing to work with the administration on tax credits and permitting reform that helps us lower costs as we're building this generation to serve this tremendous load that we're seeing.
04:45Is there anything they specifically asked of you of Duke Energy, Harry?
04:51They always want us to go faster to make sure that we're developing the power that we need to keep the reliability and doing it affordably, which is very aligned with what we do every day.
05:02Have you considered new coal investments, Harry? I know that the administration is happy to keep coal plants running. Have you considered adding any capacity there?
05:12We've always had an all of the above strategy and our coal assets are very valuable. They proved to be extremely valuable in this cold weather that we just had. We continue to maintain those to maintain reliability and affordability as we develop new technologies and build new facilities.
05:31Speaking of all the new building, Harry, you disclosed in a presentation today that you have new power contracts with Microsoft and compass for data centers in North Carolina. Any any color you can give us on those?
05:40Yeah, that's part of the four and a half gigawatts that we signed up last year as they expand and build. Those are all under construction here in North Carolina. It's very good for the communities that they serve. It's very good, like I said earlier, that they're covering their their costs and will eventually over time reduce the cost.
06:00To the rest of the customers. So we're really excited about the opportunities and we have a lot more in the hopper as well.
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