CMS Energy Corporation

CMS Energy Corporation

167.45
BRL
-2.88
(-1.69%)
7.29EPS
23.78P/E
127.67BMarket Cap
Oct 27Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJuly 28, 2026

Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the CMS Energy 2026 second quarter 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 * followed by 0.

Just a reminder that there will be a rebroadcast of this conference call today beginning at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time, running through August 4th.

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 Shore, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations.

Jason Shore

Thank you, Abby. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

With me are Garrick Rochow, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sri Maddipati, 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. Now I'll turn the call over to Garrick.

Garrick Rochow

Thank you, Jason, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Our investment thesis remains consistent: focused, durable.

It is a simple but powerful business model built on more than two decades of consistent performance, delivered execution, disciplined capital allocation, and industry-leading results. With our long capital runway, top-tier regulatory environment, and our commitment to affordable customer bills through the CE Way plus digital and other cost savings, CMS Energy continues to deliver.

This proven model drives a premium total shareholder return, made up of 6% to 8% adjusted EPS growth compounded annually and paired with an approximately 3% dividend yield. For you, our investors, it means predictable earnings growth, a competitive dividend, and long-term shareholder value.

Today, I'm going to share with you our plans to further simplify and strengthen our model as we plan to exit non-utility renewables development and focus on what we do best. Following a comprehensive strategic review of NorthStar, we are taking a deliberate step to simplify our business model and sharpen our focus on utility investment.

We plan to exit non-utility renewable development while retain a portfolio of Michigan-based assets, including Dearborn Industrial Generation, or DIG, several small gas peakers, and four commercial solar projects, all of which generate strong cash flow and support our long-term growth strategy. Let me share a little more about how this plan benefits the company and our investors.

First, we plan to reallocate capital away from NorthStar and exit non-utility renewables development. Our current five-year plan has approximately $1.7 billion dedicated primarily to non-utility renewables.

This shift of capital will reduce parent funding needs. Second, the retained assets will not require significant capital investment, and they generate strong cash flow, further optimizing parent financing and supporting our large utility capital investment plan.

Additionally, as we look to the future, proceeds from the sale of our non-Michigan assets and development projects will further reduce external funding needs at the parent, including equity. Collectively, these three items equate to a reduction of over $500 million of funding through 2030, optimizing parent financing.

Beyond 2027, we expect NorthStar's earnings to be driven primarily by DIG and the peakers. On a consolidated basis, this means nearly 100% of our earnings and future growth will be rate-base driven within the utility, supporting higher quality growth while simplifying and strengthening our overall business strategy and outlook.

We are targeting the restructuring to be complete by the end of this year and anticipate providing an interim update on future earnings calls as we execute the repositioning of this business. Now let's talk about our growth in Michigan.

We continue to see momentum across multiple sectors of Michigan's economy. On the data center front, we have made meaningful progress and have taken an additional step, reaching an agreement under our large load tariff.

This includes both the extraordinary facilities agreement and the rate agreement. We have one of the most constructive frameworks in the country for data center growth.

Our large load tariff ensures new large load customers bear all costs to serve them, supports economic growth, and protects existing customers. In fact, our average residential electric customer could see approximately $7.50 per month of bill benefit with every gigawatt of new large load.

Clear evidence of how disciplined growth supports customer affordability. The next step in the process is for the customer to receive local zoning approval, and we will incorporate the load growth associated with the agreement into our integrated resource plan, or IRP, which we'll file in September.

I continue to be confident in the progress we see here and the future benefit realized for all our customers. In addition to the large load growth we're seeing, year-to-date, we've also contracted roughly 135 megawatts of manufacturing and industrial load.

This consistent momentum is a reflection of Michigan's economic growth and why Michigan, for the fourth year in a row, was ranked number six in CNBC's Top States for Business. We continue to see strong interest from technology, advanced manufacturing, and supply chain companies looking to expand in Michigan.

These opportunities create new jobs, strengthen our communities, and continue to create long-term value for our customers and shareholders. Looking at our regulatory calendar, in June, we filed our electric rate case, requesting a $456 million revenue increase, a 10.25% ROE, and a 51.75% equity ratio.

We've also requested two-year investment recovery mechanism, or IRM, as we make needed customer investments to harden and strengthen our electric grid. In our gas business, in June, we revised our revenue request in our gas rate case to $232 million, well aligned with staff's position on our distribution spend.

We also increased our equity ratio to 51.75% to align with our electric rate case and reflect the need for a higher equity ratio to support affordability and efficient financing. These investments are outlined with clear and deliberate plans focused on continuing to deliver safe, reliable, and affordable energy for our customers.

As I previously highlighted, we have moved our IRP filing to September to reflect the recent data center agreement and ensure we are putting the best plan forward for Michigan. Now on to the financials.

For the first half, we reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.50 and are executing on our plan to deliver full-year guidance. We are reaffirming our full-year 2026 guidance of $3.83 to $3.90 per share, with continued confidence toward the high end.

We also have a clear line of sight on our 2027 guidance given the change in strategy at NorthStar, and are introducing full-year 2027 guidance of $4.08 to $4.17, which maintains growth within our long-term guidance range of 6% to 8% off of 2025 actuals. This guidance reinforces and demonstrates our confidence in the continued growth and earnings power of our business post-NorthStar restructuring.

Longer term, we continue to guide toward the high end of our adjusted EPS growth range of 6% to 8%. With that, I'll hand the call over to Sri.

Sri Maddipati

Thank you, Garrick, and good morning, everyone. I want to thank those of you who have reached out over the last few weeks with kind words of support as I stepped into the CFO role.

I've enjoyed getting to reconnect with many of you and look forward to seeing those I haven't over the remainder of the year. Today, I'll focus on three things: first-half results, the path to delivering our 2026 guidance, and how our investment and financing plans support durable long-term growth.

I'll start on slide eight, where we have the standard waterfall chart, which illustrates the key drivers of our financial performance for the first six months of 2026 and our year-to-go assumptions for meeting our expected guidance range. For the first half of 2026, the company delivered adjusted net income of $464 million or $1.50 per share.

The $0.23 year-over-year unfavorable variance is primarily due to benefits realized in the first half of 2025 from liability management that were already contemplated in our 2026 plan and do not impact our full-year guidance. Relative to our planned assumptions so far this year, the primary headwind has been the impact of storms, which we have identified actions to offset, including, but not limited to, the pending storm deferral filed with the commission.

From a top-line perspective, an unfavorable weather comp from last year and slightly lower cooling and heating degree days in Q2 versus normal resulted in an unfavorable variance of $0.08 for year-to-date results. New rates, net of investment costs, drove a positive $0.20 of earnings, which continue to move up year-to-date with the benefits of last year's gas rate order, new electric rates, which commenced in May, and continued investments in renewable projects at the utility.

The $0.19 of unfavorable O&M variance was primarily driven by the previously mentioned storm activity. The $0.16 of unfavorable parent and other includes items planned in our full-year guidance, as well as positive sales trends year-to-date.

For the remaining six months to go, we'll continue to plan for normal weather. The unfavorable variance of $0.18 reflects the absence of weather upside in 2025.

While July temperatures have been helpful, we don't count on weather upside as part of our planning. However, it does mitigate potential headwinds or allow reinvestment to benefit customers and strengthen the plan for the future.

As I mentioned, we continue to see ongoing benefits from the previously mentioned rate orders and renewable investments. We are also planning a constructive outcome in our pending gas case.

In total, we see rates, net of investment costs, driving $0.22 of positive earnings in the second half. We expect a positive $0.25 of O&M-driven earnings in part by constructive outcome in the pending storm deferral docket, as well as normalized storm activity for the balance of the year.

The last piece of the to-go portion of the walk results in a positive variance of $0.16 to $0.23 and has several components, including: one, the absence of pull-aheads from last year that were funded by favorable weather in 2025; second, the continued performance of NorthStar, including DIG's higher contribution since last year's outage and new contracts this year; and third, a conservative assumption for non-weather sales, which, as I mentioned, are trending positively year-to-date. While Garrick has already affirmed our financial objectives, I'll reiterate my confidence in our ability to deliver on this year's EPS guidance, our 2027 guidance that we have initiated today, and our long-term EPS growth.

Turning to slide nine, the foundation of our long-term growth is the robust $24 billion utility investment plan, which drives 10.5% compounded rate base growth. Our decision to reposition NorthStar enables us to efficiently fund the current five-year plan and, over time, allocate incremental capital to the utility, providing high-quality, durable earnings with strong long-term value.

You'll note we are highlighting a $2 billion capital opportunity for utility renewables related to the already approved renewable energy plan, or REP, and an additional $1 billion of electric distribution reliability opportunity represented in the roadmap we've already filed with the commission. These investments are opportunities in the back half of the plan as we continue to improve distribution reliability and meet Michigan's energy law requirements.

As we have highlighted in the past, non-rate-base earnings differentiate our model from a typical utility and have future growth potential. Energy efficiency incentives and the financial compensation mechanism, or FCM, on power purchase agreements are key parts of Michigan's legislative framework and benefit customers and investors.

While energy efficiency remains a component of our long-term plan, it's a relatively mature program. The FCM has the potential to drive additional opportunity through this decade and the next as we continue to procure electric supply resources that ensure reliability as well as meet the renewable energy, clean energy, and battery storage requirements of Michigan's energy law.

Let's move to slide 10, where I'll cover the company's funding needs and progress in 2026. We remain on track to complete our 2026 financing plan, including planned debt issuances at the utility and the remainder of our common equity issuance under our established ATM program.

While we don't typically update our long-term financing plans during the year, in the context of the NorthStar decision, I would like to provide direction as to when and how future financings will likely be impacted. Our current five-year plan assumes a total of $3.75 billion of new equity.

This year, we plan to issue $700 million and have already completed nearly $500 million at attractive prices. This leaves approximately $3 billion over the remainder of the plan.

As we redeploy cash from NorthStar, we would anticipate reducing at least $350 million of equity from the current plan. We'll provide an update on our financing plan during the Q4 call as part of our normal annual planning process.

Turning to slide 10, I want to spend a moment describing what gives us confidence in our investment thesis and how it delivers customer value and maintains affordability. This slide depicts how growth and affordability reinforce one another and do so year in and year out, delivering 6% to 8% earnings growth for investors while keeping customer bill growth at or below inflation.

Our utility investments drive 10.5% rate base growth, and those investments help reduce customer costs and drive earnings growth. Long-term investments in our electric supply and natural gas storage allow us to deliver significant cost savings as well as resiliency and reliability benefits to customers during the hottest days of the summer and the coldest days of the winter.

We have demonstrated the ability to manage operating costs through our lean operating system, the CE Way. This relentless focus on eliminating waste and driving efficiency through better process and automation enables us to deliver savings year after year, creating the headroom to make needed investments in distribution reliability and gas safety.

Support for financially healthy utilities in both legislation and regulation means we can use our balance sheet to make long-term investments and leverage efficient financing to lower costs for our customers. Finally, with 2% to 3% sales growth anticipated and the ongoing customer benefits of energy efficiency, which is up to 2% on the electric side, we see lower customer bills as individual customer consumption is reduced and fixed costs are spread across increasing load.

This proven and durable business model allows us to provide safe, reliable, and affordable service to our customers and deliver consistent financial performance for you, our investors. While I'm new to my role, I'm not new to CMS.

The foundation of our business model is strong, and in the 12 years I've been with the company, the opportunities to serve our customers, grow our state, and drive long-term value for our investors have never been better. I'm confident in the strategy we are executing in the years and decades to come.

Now, I'll turn it back to Garrick before we take your questions.

Garrick Rochow

Thanks, Sri. At CMS Energy, we deliver: 23 years now of consistent, industry-leading performance regardless of circumstances, year in and year out.

You can count on CMS Energy to deliver for all of its stakeholders. With that, Abby, please open the lines for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you very much, Garrick. The question-and-answer session will be conducted electronically.

If you would like to ask a question, please do so by pressing the * key followed by the number 1 on your touchtone telephone. If you are using a speaker function, please make sure you pick up your handset.

We will proceed in the order that you signal us and will 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 *1 again.

We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Richard Sunderland with Truist Securities.

Your line is open.

Richard Sunderland

Hey, good morning. Thanks for the time today and thanks for all the details in the update.

I guess starting with NorthStar, to throw out the first question of kind of why now, is this all with an eye to higher utility growth, and are you thinking about other opportunities related or outside of that business any differently, whether it's DIG recontracting or the progress on the data center efforts? Just kind of looking at the big picture here, can you speak a little bit more to the process and timing?

Garrick Rochow

Let me just walk a little bit through it from a process perspective leading up to this, and then I'm sure Sri's going to want to jump in as well to the conversation here. You would expect, as good fiduciaries of the business, that we're always looking on a regular basis at our businesses, and we do that.

We look at it from an all-stakeholder perspective, from customers all the way to investors. From an investor standpoint, we're looking at how we deploy capital to bring the highest value back to our owners.

The decision we're sharing here today does just that, right? We talked about reallocation of capital, the capital assets we're going to maintain with light capital investment and bring cash back to the parent, the disposition of assets.

We walked through all that, and Sri will go into some additional details of that. I would also point out just the guidance we've provided as well: long-term, 6% to 8% toward the high end, and we were deliberate about 2027 guidance because we're giving you the visibility, but also sharing our confidence in the growth and earnings power of this business.

What you should read through that is no rebase, that's what you should see in there. Then just the bigger picture here, because you talked about what other things we could do, we are simplifying.

That is the key message, right? We are improving the financials of our overall business, and we are focused on the utility.

Nearly 100% of the earnings after '27 come right out of regulated utility. That is a high-quality earnings, that's high-quality growth, that's what our investors expect.

Sri, please.

Sri Maddipati

Richard. Appreciate the question.

I'll hit on Garrick's comment. We're focused on utility investment.

We have a robust plan. I hit that in my prepared remarks at $24 billion.

What this repositioning of NorthStar and restructuring does allows us to more efficiently finance that capital, both at the parent, because we're reducing our financing needs, so that really strengthens and lengthens our plan, and then improves our balance sheet flexibility as we continue to finance utility capital. Really across the financing, as well as the allocation of capital, we're strengthening the business and simplifying it.

Richard Sunderland

Great. Thanks for running through all of that.

Then turning towards the utility, looks like great progress in terms of the agreement with the data center. Curious if you could speak a little bit more to what still has to go on the customer side, your thoughts on that in light of expected inclusion in your IRP filing and just, I guess, progress overall there relative to sort of expectations earlier in the year and how things currently stand on sort of final agreements.

Garrick Rochow

As I shared in the Q1 call, we'd continue to provide updates on progress, and pleased with the progress. We talked about the signature, both in the rate construct, a rate agreement, as well as the extraordinary facilities agreement.

All that kind of fits under this large load tariff. I talked about the benefit of that in my prepared remarks and what that means for not only economic growth and capital investment, but ensures the existing customers don't pay for that.

In fact, there's a benefit associated with that. We're very clear to share the zoning is still underway.

The customer is working through that, and we want to be respectful of the locals and they're doing their due diligence. I've also talked about that on calls in the past, we're going to let that play out.

What gives me optimism is the customer is working through multiple locations in the state. That tariff, because it's a tariff, that contractual piece can apply anywhere in our service territory, which is great.

Then we'll build that in September into our integrated resource plan, that load growth. Sri, would you like to add anything to that?

No,

Sri Maddipati

the only thing I'd add, Garrick, is that the capital plan that we have today doesn't reflect that load growth, there continues to be upside opportunity that will be reflected in the IRP that we'll incorporate over time into our plans.

Richard Sunderland

Great. Thanks for all that.

I'll leave it there.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Jeremy Tonet

Hi, good morning.

Garrick Rochow

Morning, Jeremy.

Sri Maddipati

Good morning.

Jeremy Tonet

Thanks. Just wanted to dive in on the '27 guide a little bit more if I could.

Just wondering any preliminary thoughts at this point in time, obviously depends on where full year falls for '26, but how you think you could land within the range there, and imagine the renewables timing would also come into play here, but just any thoughts on how you think you could trend within that range?

Sri Maddipati

Hey, Jeremy, it's Sri. Thanks for the question.

I'd give you a couple things. One, we're not biasing the range.

We've provided confidence in that range. It's really driven by the utility growth.

That's the underlying assumptions to the plan. As you think about 2027, we have already incorporated the repositioning of NorthStar into that guidance, we're confident with the assumptions we've made.

Now, as we execute over the course of '26 and into '27, we'll update part of our normal planning process as we go through the course of this year and next.

Jeremy Tonet

Got it. Thanks for that.

Then just wanted to maybe dive in a little bit more, you talked about cost efficiencies in NorthStar restructuring, and just wondered if you could talk a little bit more detail about what categories these could look like and what type of magnitudes?

Sri Maddipati

Jeremy, as we exit renewables development, there is costs associated with having that type of platform, both from engineering and development perspective, we can get cost efficiencies from our business as we exit that business and deploy capital elsewhere.

Jeremy Tonet

Got it. Thank you.

I'll leave it there.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Nick Campanella with Barclays. Your line is open.

Nick Campanella

Hey, good morning. Thanks for all the information and the outlook on '27.

I'm just trying to frame, NorthStar last year was about $0.30, and our understanding is about half of that is the renewables, and there's some dev costs in there as well. What is the offset besides lower parent financing, or maybe that's just entirely it?

When I kind of think about the year to go, there is about $0.16 to $0.23 of benefit from parent financing, tax, and other. I'm just wondering how much of that is kind of one-time in nature that we have to kind of take out of '27, and really just trying to understand is parent going to continue to see a year-over-year benefit net of all these drivers as we look towards '27?

Sri Maddipati

Nick, I'll break the question apart a little bit. As you think about '27 and beyond, we are retaining DIG and a handful of renewables assets.

Those will continue to provide earnings into '27 and beyond. Then when you think about the incremental cash from those assets that are no longer being deployed into renewables development, they'll offset parent financing.

Over time, the utility growth will be more efficiently financed, you'll see continuing benefit at the parent year over year.

Nick Campanella

Continued benefit year over year. Okay.

Thank you. Then maybe just an update on how you're thinking about the storm deferrals in the plan that you've outlined today, maybe based off precedent and what's currently pending in front of the commission and just your underlying assumptions there.

Thank you.

Sri Maddipati

We are assuming a constructive order in that pending docket. As I noted in my prepared remarks, that's not the limit to how we're going to consider planned or identifying offsets to storm costs over the course of the year.

We do have good precedent for that from last year, and our performance continues to get better, we expect a constructive outcome in that docket.

Nick Campanella

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Hey, good morning. Thank you, guys.

Appreciate it. I appreciate the time.

Sri, it's a pleasure. Congrats again.

Wish Reggie the best here. I'm just wanting to come back on the announcement here this morning.

Just with respect to the outlook, I wanted to ask how accretive is this transaction, as best you guess them made here today? Obviously, there's a number of different moving pieces here, but is there any way to kind of give us a number by 2030 and how to think about what the increment decrement is based on what you're announcing?

I know that obviously 2026, 2027, but as you look at the tail end of the outlook here, if you can comment to that and the relative accretion?

Sri Maddipati

Hey, Julien, nice to hear you. Appreciate the congrats.

A couple things: our outlook, our long-term growth trajectory hasn't changed, 6% to 8%. Garrick reiterated that, and I'll reiterate the same.

What really this plan does is it doesn't change our growth outlook, it changes the composition of growth. We're reallocating capital away from NorthStar, more of the upside and more of the growth will come from the utility.

Over time, we're financing that more efficiently by not allocating capital to renewable development at NorthStar. You'll see us strengthen and lengthen our plan over time as we have more efficient financing at the parent.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Is there a way to think about what the contribution would have been, shall we say this way, when you think about the prior plan for 2030, and just what the assets would have contributed out in that time period? Just the pre and post, had it not been for this transaction, what the composition would have been out in the 2030 time period from those assets?

Garrick Rochow

Julien, we are exiting the renewable development piece of it. Those were generating largely development gains related to developing those assets.

What we're retaining is DIG, and so the earnings from that and the cash flow from that are being retained. What that's doing is offsetting parent drag over time.

As you're kind of modeling out to 2030, you're seeing more that outlook for the utility stays the same, we have 10.5% rate base growth there, but you're going to see less and less drag at the parent, which is offsetting any of the renewables development earnings over time.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Right, it was a positive earnings contribution in the 2030 timeframe previously. The question is what you're selling it and replacing it for.

Go for it.

Garrick Rochow

The way I'd think about it, Julien, is 6% to 8%, continue to have confidence in that growth. This is strengthening and lengthening the plan and is creating more durable earnings as we go out not only through the plan, but beyond the plan.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Got it. Okay.

All right, guys. I'll leave it there, but thank you all very much.

Appreciate it, all right? See you soon.

Garrick Rochow

Thanks, Julien.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Shar Pourreza with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Shar Pourreza

Hey, guys. Good morning.

Garrick Rochow

Welcome, Shar.

Shar Pourreza

Morning. Congrats, Sri, by the way on your first role as CFO, first call.

Sri Maddipati

Appreciate it, Shar.

Shar Pourreza

Yeah. Garrick, I know we've seen obviously Microsoft struggle a little bit with zoning in some of their sites in Michigan.

I guess, does the 20-year contract survive if zoning drags materially or fails outright? Is there kind of a drop-dead date or a ramp in the agreement?

Then obviously you just mentioned that they could be looking at multiple locations in the state, could that be outside of your territory, maybe closer to Detroit? Thanks.

Garrick Rochow

Here's one of the wonderful things about our succession plan. When you've got a financial expert assuming the role of CFO who's also spent time in operations, who is also, not only dealt with power supply costs, but been in the conversations with data centers, I'm going to ask him to respond to the question just given his expertise.

Sri Maddipati

There's a couple pieces to this, Shar. It's more than one customer, it's more than one location, and so that's what's giving us confidence.

Like Garrick said, our construct for large load, I think, is one of the best in the country. It protects customers, it drives affordability, and it drives certainty from an investment and credit perspective over the long run.

I think we're well positioned to continue to attract large loads, both in the near term and the long term.

Garrick Rochow

What I would just add to that, and I said it in my prepared remarks or in response to a question, it's a tariff, right? As that customer thinks about different locations in the state, that has the flexibility to move along with them in those other locations, and so that's really the beauty of it.

Thanks for your question, Shar.

Shar Pourreza

Got it. Then just lastly, on just the DIG recontracting, obviously that's called out as upside, how should we be thinking about the timing of recontracting and the contracted merchant mix there?

Thanks.

Garrick Rochow

Hey, Shar, some of that will layer into the back half of this year and even into next year. Then you should think of that as we try not to leave a lot of merchant outstanding to provide predictable earnings, think of that in the back half of the plan: '29, '30, and beyond.

Shar Pourreza

Okay. Perfect.

Appreciate it, guys. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Travis Miller with Morningstar. Your line is open.

Travis Miller

Good morning. Thank you.

Garrick Rochow

Thanks, Travis.

Travis Miller

Just back to NorthStar just to be super clear here, what exactly is for sale? Is it if we just took the assets or renewable assets not in Michigan, I'm looking Ohio, Texas, etc., is that what's actually for sale?

Then contrasting that with what you would save in future development, right, just trying to get an idea of how it's either earnings-neutral or earnings-accretive proceeds versus savings in capital over the next, what, three to five years?

Garrick Rochow

Travis, I'll walk through the assets a bit with you, and then hand it over to Sri to finish the conversation. Think of this as those out-of-state assets that are renewables, some of them are in construction and some of them are development assets.

There's also a bit of assets in Michigan that are being dispositioned as well, and so we've been very clear to talk about what's in. Again, I'll just reiterate that: Dearborn Industrial Generation, a couple small gas peakers—they go by the names of Kalamazoo and Livingston—and four commercial solar projects in Michigan.

That's what we're retaining as part of NorthStar. Sri, please.

Sri Maddipati

Travis, a couple pieces, and Garrick highlighted some of this in his prepared remarks. One, you have lower capital allocation to NorthStar, so that's the $1.7 billion of capital.

That frees up capital efficiency at the parent, so that's one piece. The second piece is the cash flow from DIG and the peakers and the retained Michigan assets that were otherwise going into development at NorthStar will now fund and offset parent funding needs.

Then lastly, over time, we can sell the non-Michigan assets, and we've incorporated all of that into the $500 million-plus of funding offset that we've disclosed here. All three of those combined give about $500 million of funding offset over time.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Sullivan with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Michael Sullivan

Hey, good morning. Another congrats to Sri, welcome back.

I just wanted to clarify on the utility capex opportunity, is the $3 billion upside you spoke to in the plan and part of the long-term growth rate reaffirmation, and if not, how do you think about the financing there? You talked about bringing down the equity needs, but then what happens with the equity needs, how do you fund the incremental capex if that wasn't included today?

Sri Maddipati

Hi, Michael. Appreciate the question.

Thanks for the congrats. A couple pieces there: no, it's not in the plan, those were upside opportunities in the plan in the back half and beyond.

Part of the benefits that we have from the repositioning of NorthStar is the strengthening and the increased flexibility of that balance sheet. We wouldn't necessarily take up the equity for that incremental capital.

Now we'll incorporate that and update our financing plans over time as we incorporate that capital into the plan.

Michael Sullivan

Understood. Then I'll take another crack at some of the questions just on NorthStar, what's still assumed or was previously assumed.

Is it fair to say that when you talk about nearly 100% utility, it's predominantly just DIG at that $70 million a year pretax run rate is the residual non-utility earnings in the plan now?

Sri Maddipati

Yes, that's the right way to think about it.

Michael Sullivan

Okay. Then last one, what specifically would enable starting to target the high end of '27?

Is it just getting through more of the year, or are there other levers or opportunities that you're looking to capture in the coming months that could help get you there?

Sri Maddipati

Michael, I'll just remind you, it's early for 2027. We're comfortable with the assumptions we've gotten embedded.

As we execute over the course of '26 and get visibility on those assumptions, we'll incorporate that into our planning process. Like I said, we typically don't provide guidance this early, but given the change in NorthStar strategy, we wanted to make sure investors had visibility into how we were thinking about the business.

We'll update that as part of our planning process over the course of this year and into early next.

Michael Sullivan

Understood. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Sophie Karp with KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Sophie Karp

Hi.

Sri Maddipati

Good morning.

Sophie Karp

Congratulations on first earnings call in the new role, Sri, and thank you for taking my question. Could we talk a little bit about the economics of the remaining peakers and the solar, I guess, assets in Michigan?

Are those also long-term contracted, similar to DIG? Is there upside from those?

Kind of related to this, would you consider down the road an option to absorb those into your rate base somehow?

Garrick Rochow

Let me answer. When we think DIG and the peakers and the capacity position there, those are contracted in a similar fashion.

Then the retained solar assets are on long-term contract as well. While we're not assuming significant earnings past '27, they do generate cash flow that helps the parent as well.

In terms of rate base, I think that's too early, that's not going to be incorporated into this IRP. It obviously provides flexibility over time, but we're comfortable with the way those assets are contracted outside of the utility.

Got it.

Sophie Karp

Got it. Thank you.

Then going back to the data center topic, how are you thinking about demonstrating, I guess, customer benefits from data centers from your contracts? Is that just kind of offsetting a rate cycle or maybe reducing future rate asks, or is there a more explicit way to show it to people via a bill credit of some kind?

I guess what is the and if you could maybe talk through some kind of rule of thumb, like for every gigawatt you sign, how much of the rate increase would be displaced, right, and either the rate increase will be displaced, or something along those lines? Any color would be appreciated.

Garrick Rochow

Appreciate the question, Sophie. In fact, we are doing just that.

As I referenced in my prepared remarks, for every new gigawatt of large load signed under the tariff here, that equates to roughly $7.50 of bill benefit for the average residential electric customer. That's real savings with this growth as a result of our large load tariff and how that is structured.

We're being very open with the communities, with customers about that benefit. Part of that process, as that load comes on, as that load's generated, those savings flow back to customers through the rate case process.

We're looking to do that to show them the benefit. Right now, it's about making it visible for our customers in terms of just putting a real dollars and cents to it.

Sri Maddipati

Sophie, the only things I would add to Garrick's comments is under that tariff, we're spreading around the larger of the fixed costs over a bigger base. Under the large tariff, those customers pay for the incremental resources they need.

I'll just point you to the slide that we had in our deck, it's just a proven and durable business model that reiterates itself: affordability and growth can reinforce each other.

Sophie Karp

Yep. Yep.

Yep. Great.

Appreciate the color.

Operator

As a reminder, it is *1 if you would like to ask a question. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Weisel with Scotiabank.

Your line is open.

Andrew Weisel

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Sri, great to have you back, and I'm sure Reggie's out there somewhere furiously hitting *1 trying to answer some of our questions, but good to see Sri back in the seat. First question is on the regulatory side, I think there was some comments about the IRP being pushed to September related to the data center opportunity.

Can you just maybe explain a little bit more, would that suggest that you'll be including generation related to that data center customer, and if so, would that look like baseload gas or something like that?

Garrick Rochow

I look forward to sharing more and more of our IRP as we approach the September timeframe. We've done a lot of foreshadowing.

From the renewable energy plan there's 13 gigawatts of renewables that have been pre-approved, that flow into the integrated resource plan. There's battery storage as required by state law, but in fact to be able to ensure reliability, we have to add more battery storage across the system.

We've been very clear, too, to foreshadow the importance of during certain hours of the day where there's not solar and the batteries are depleted, you need gas turbines, simple cycles, and 1.5 gigawatts really to ensure reliability during those hours, and it works to replace our current 3 and 4 facility, which is an oil and gas-fired peakers, 1.2 gigawatts. It's almost a direct replacement for that as well.

That's a big piece of it that's there. Now we're also sharing that load growth is going to be incorporated into our integrated resource plan.

Be clear, we're not connecting gas with data centers. That's not something that gas equals data centers.

There's a really nice solution that we can put in place, and we'll share more of that as we get into our IRP in the September timeframe.

Andrew Weisel

Sounds good. Then also on the regulatory front, the storm deferral, I understand you've got the docket underway, but we also had another storm midsummer.

How do you think about the potential another round of that? Would you worry about overusing the mechanism relative to traditional storm cost recovery, or are you waiting to see how the first docket goes before making those decisions?

Garrick Rochow

I'm going to just talk about the big picture here for a moment and what gives us confidence from a storm deferral perspective here. Big picture, our reliability performance, our storm process is improving.

We were once a fourth quartile company, now we're solidly in third quartile, approaching second quartile in terms of performance. In terms of restoration over the first six months of the year, 92% of our customers were restored in 24 hours or less across that.

We're seeing all the right indicators. We got a reliability roadmap which we filed with the commission, which was reflective of the Liberty audit.

The staff, the commission have been constructive in terms of the investments needed. We're making those investments.

Every time we make those investments, we see and we measure the benefit. We're actually just getting rolling on five years of tree trimming, a five-year cycle, which is new for us, so that benefit to the customers is going to continue to show up and improve.

Now, we had some storms in July. I'd love for them to be perfect, but a July 4th storm is tough.

I was even out in the field the entire day on the 4th and talked with customers, talked with our team. There's some things we did really well, but there's also some areas where we need to improve, and so we incorporate that into the process through our lessons learned and just continue on this path.

Again, pulling back up to that bigger picture, where we're headed, where we're going, that's what gives me confidence in the storm deferral process and that mechanism that's been created. Then too, it's really reflective of our Q1 storm, which was an ice storm, which performed much better than the previous ice storm as well.

It's all those things that give Sri confidence, that give me confidence in this storm deferral.

Sri Maddipati

Andrew, I would just say we have confidence: one, because of the precedent from last year around a storm deferral; and we have opportunity to wait through the course of the summer before we decide if there's a need for anything else. We're always managing headwinds and tailwinds over the course of the year, as I noted in my prepared remarks, we have an opportunity if there's need for incremental to wait through the course of the summer and into the fall.

Andrew Weisel

Great. That's very helpful.

One last small one if I could squeeze it in related to NorthStar: my understanding is correctly that the 2027 guidance assumes that some assets will be sold, and therefore, you've got $0.25 to $0.30 of guidance in 2026. You're not giving that level of detail, but would it be fair to assume that the '27 contribution from NorthStar would be less because you're assuming some assets will be sold, but not yet assuming cash proceeds lowering equity needs?

Is that a fair way to think of it?

Sri Maddipati

The way I would think about it, Andrew, is that we are retaining some of the assets, and we have incorporated that into the '27 guide. You're right, we're not going to break down at this point the different contributions, but we have incorporated the assumption that we would sell down some of the assets at NorthStar.

Andrew Weisel

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Our final question comes from the line of Anthony Crowdell with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Anthony Crowdell

Hey, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in.

Just one quick one. You're very clear on what you've sold from NorthStar.

You talked about the recontracting opportunities on DIG. Just curious, why not have DIG part of the sell process?

You've kept it, you're clear that you're keeping it. Is it that you think it's a rate base opportunity going forward, or you're just using it as optionality in the portfolio, maybe to offset equity needs in the future?

Just curious on why keeping DIG and not just selling all of NorthStar.

Garrick Rochow

Thanks for the question, Anthony. One, DIG is an asset which generates significant cash flow, and doesn't require significant incremental capex to get that cash flow.

It really helps offset parent financing. You'd have to get significant value for that, and it's a core asset for us from a capacity and energy perspective and we're comfortable and we know it well.

Anthony Crowdell

Great. That's all I had.

Thanks so much.

Operator

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr.

Garrick Rochow for closing remarks.

Garrick Rochow

Thanks, Abby. I'd like to thank you for joining us today.

Take care and stay safe.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.