Thank you, Audra. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining NorthWestern Energy Group's financial results webcast for the quarter ended March 31st, 2026.

My name is Travis Meyer, and I'm the Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations Officer for NorthWestern. Joining us on the call today are Brian Bird, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Crystal Lail, Chief Financial Officer.

They'll walk you through our financial results and provide an overall update on what great progress we've had this quarter. NorthWestern's results have been released, and the release is available on our website at northwesternenergy.com.

We also released our 10-Q pre-market this morning. Please note that the company's press release, this presentation, comments by presenters, and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements.

As such, I'll direct you to the disclosures contained within our SEC filings and the safe harbor provisions included in the second slide of this presentation. Also note that this presentation includes non-GAAP financial measures and information regarding the pending merger transaction.

Please note these non-GAAP disclosures, definitions, and reconciliations, and the merger-related disclosures included in the appendix of today's presentation materials. This webcast is being recorded.

The archived replay will be available shortly after the event and will remain active for 1 year. Please visit the financial results section on the website to access the replay.

With those details behind us, I'll hand over the presentation to Brian Bird for his opening remarks.

Thanks, Travis. On our recent highlights for the quarter, we reported GAAP diluted EPS of $1.03 and a non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.31.

We're affirming our 2026 earnings guidance range of $3.68 to $3.83, and we're also affirming our long-term rate base EPS growth rate targets of 4 to 6%. From a merger progress perspective, I'm sure all of you listening have noted that we've received shareholder approval of our pending merger with Black Hills and received approval of all proposals.

We've also put in place constructive settlements with each of our key intervenors in Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota associated with the merger dockets. From a regulatory and legislative standpoint, we've had constructive wildfire legislation passed in South Dakota, and we recently submitted a large new load tariff proposal with the MPSC.

Regarding data centers, we're happy to announce we've signed another development agreement, this time with Quantica Infrastructure, now for a total of three development agreements associated with data centers. Lastly, for dividend, we declared a dividend of 67 cents per share payable June 30, 2026, to the June 15 record date.

With that, I'm going to pass it over to Crystal for our first quarter financial review.

Thank you, Brian. In my comments today, I will cover our first quarter results, our 2026 earnings outlook and our capital plan, and then I will turn it back to Brian to give you some of the exciting updates that he mentioned as we started the call.

I will begin my comments on slide seven. We delivered GAAP earnings of $1.03, which includes impacts of a historically warm first quarter, merger-related costs, and costs related to incremental Colstrip ownership.

On an adjusted basis, we delivered $1.31, or 7.4% increase off of our 2025 first quarter results. Slide eight provides a bit of detail on these key drivers for the quarter that includes improved margin, albeit net of the weather I just mentioned, offset by higher operating costs, depreciation, and interest expense.

With regard to those operating costs, that includes 12 cents of an increase from the prior quarter due to our incremental ownership of Colstrip and 4 cents driven by labor and benefits. We've talked many times about the rationale for owning additional Colstrip and the importance of that facility to serving our customers in Montana, and we expect the annual operating costs to be approximately $48 million related to that incremental ownership.

On a quarterly basis, you can think about that generally running about $12 million a quarter, and you will see that we have offset approximately $8 million of those costs here in Q1. The recovery of these costs is certainly impacted by low market power prices, impacted by overall conditions driving power pricing lower than our expectations.

Moving to slide nine to give you more detail with regard to margin. Margins for the first quarter reflect new rates in Montana.

You'll recall the timing of our rate filing last year and not having interim rate recovery in the first quarter, you'll see that increase here. Also noted are the sales from the Puget Colstrip interest and also continued growth in our transmission revenues in the bulk electric system.

This was offset by weather, as Montana experienced the warmest winter in over 100 years. Moving to slide 10, that warm weather impacted us as an unfavorable 17 cents versus what we would expect as normal volumetric loads.

As I mentioned, very mild weather in Montana, and that continued off of our fourth quarter results as well. The quarter also included 5 cents of merger costs and 5 cents of operating expenses from Colstrip that were not recovered that I just mentioned.

Those adjustments result in, on an adjusted basis, $1.31 of earnings again for the first quarter of 2026, as compared with $1.22 in the prior quarter. Moving to slide 11, Brian noted that we are reaffirming our guidance for 2026.

Looking ahead to the timing of our next rate reviews, which you all typically would expect us to announce our timing of rate reviews here in Q4, or in Q1, excuse me. The settlement agreements that Brian will give you more detail on related to the merger do include some stay-out provisions both in Nebraska and South Dakota.

For Montana, we have not determined the timing of our next rate review, as the 2024 case still remains under reconsideration. In addition, critical to our long-term earnings profile, as we've talked about where we want to be from a 4 to 6% earnings growth perspective, are the developments that Brian referred to with relation to development agreements with Quantica and also the large load tariff filing, all underpinning our ability to reaffirm our guidance both for 2026 and beyond.

Slide 12 gives you more detail on our capital plan. This remains unchanged from our fourth quarter call of $3.2 billion from 2026 through 2030, and I'll remind you that that is driven by essential investments to meet our customers' needs.

It does not include incremental investments that may be driven by additional regional transmission opportunities that we are very excited about or serving any of these large loads. It does include, however, what we adjusted for at Q4, which is to include the incremental generating capacity in South Dakota related to the South Dakota or SPP expedited resource adequacy study.

We are delivering on our base capital plan without issuing new common equity and have no equity needs in 2026. As we updated you on our Q4 call, incremental capital in 2027 related to the generation capacity in South Dakota will require some equity needs in 2027 and beyond.

With that, I will turn it back to Brian for the rest of the updates.

Thanks, Crystal. On page 14, we've got good news in terms of South Dakota wildfire bill.

Senate Bill 36 was passed by the South Dakota legislator legislature with broad bipartisan support, and it's been signed into law. I would just say, first and foremost, no strict liability.

Strict liability cannot be applied to utility operations alleged to have caused wildfire-related damages. In fact, the legal protections for providers and damages also shown on page 14, you will find is extremely similar to what we have in our Montana legislation.

As a matter of fact, if you want to go back and compare this page to our Montana page, it's very, very similar. We're very excited about the protection that we have in our two electric states from a wildfire perspective.

Some of the best wildfire protection in the United States at the state level. We plan to submit our wildfire mitigation plan for the South Dakota PUC approval in the second half of 2026, and we expect to update that plan every 2 years going forward.

Last thing I would say here from a wildfire perspective, I look back 3 years ago and what we've been able to do from a legislative standpoint, and an operational standpoint, and a situational awareness standpoint, we feel much better about how we will mitigate wildfire risk in our states, but also acknowledge there are is going to be a difficult fire season in front of us, and and we need to be cognizant of that as we continue to monitor our systems in those two states. Regarding the merger with Black Hills and how that benefits stakeholders, I think certainly we spent a lot of time talking to shareholders about this.

Obviously, the increased scale and our ability to go from a 4 to 6% EPS grower to 5 to 7%, and being able to putting these two companies together double our rate base on a going-forward basis, expanding investment opportunity, having more resources not only from a financial standpoint, but from a personnel standpoint, putting the right amount of resources at these opportunities. A stronger balance sheet, two strong companies coming together to even have a stronger balance sheet on the other end, and obviously enhanced business diversity in terms of a expanded footprint and a much larger company for both entities.

That's certainly a benefit to shareholders, and that combination represents a highly attractive value creation opportunity. I think that's been supported by our shareholders.

86% approximately 86% of our shareholders voted, and of those that did, 99.7% voted in support of the merger. Obviously, trying to do the right thing from a shareholder perspective, but this merger will benefit many stakeholders and certainly customers.

What I want to say about customers, not just taking two companies that provide great service and do it in a reliable and in a cost-effective manner, but on a going-forward basis, any cost savings that these two companies will achieve ultimately accrue back to customers in future rate reviews. We're excited in this time period when affordability is front and center in front of all of our customers, doing the things that we need to do to help in that regard, and the merger is certainly one of those.

We're we hope as we move forward with each of the three states where we're working with, we ultimately can get those approvals. With that, on slide 16, talking about the timeline itself, we did acknowledge here earlier in the call reaching settlements in each of the three states that we've filed applications for approval, and we actually had a hearing already in Nebraska and and will have hearings in Montana and South Dakota in the May and June timetable, respectively.

Continued good progress there, and again, having key intervenor settlements are are key at this point in time. In addition, from a state perspective, we've certainly filed back with FERC way back in December, and if you look at the 180-day approval timeline, hope to hear back from FERC by the end of June, on a FERC perspective.

In terms of the S-4 and joint proxy, obviously, the shareholder approvals were received here not too long ago, and the Hart-Scott-Rodino, we've satisfied that based upon the waiting period expiring for that. Really, a lot of green checks on this page on this timeline, that's fantastic.

We still certainly waiting on not only FERC, but the three states to ultimately make a decision, and obviously we have to have hearings in in two of those states. Lots of green checks.

We'd like to think we could get something sooner rather than later, but we still believe that an outcome will will finally be achieved here, and obviously getting the approvals we need, we'd like that expect to have that in the second half of 2026. Regarding data center process and and progress, I would say we continue to see quite a bit of demand.

We actually increased our data center request queue from 6 to 8 since the last time you've seen this page. High-level assessments actually come down one.

I think as people go through the process and understand what they need to do, in essence to put forward a deposit, to think about the costs associated with moving forward, we had one of those fall away down to four in that high-level assessment. Hopefully, we can continue to move folks there to a development agreement.

By the way, speaking of that, you can notice on slide 17, we've kind of grayed out letters of intent. When Quantica signed a development agreement, we no longer have any LOIs, per se.

We've moved those to the development agreement stage. As we move forward with folks in the high-level assessment, we we would want to move them directly to a development agreement.

That that's the hope there. Of the three in the development agreement phase, we'd like to move all of those to an ESA, for an energy service agreement.

I and I would say this, instead of guaranteeing a timing of any ESAs, I would put it in this context: all three of those parties, those developers, would like to have an ESA done by the end of 2026. We, on our end, we're doing everything we possibly can to deliver that we're ready from a a 2026 perspective, but we'd also point out that they need to do certain things on their aspects as as well.

The hope is we could bring some of these development agreements to ESA by the end of the year, but certain things certainly must get done, and and we will work with them, and and all of us desire to make that happen by the end of the year. On slide 18, in from a regulatory front, in terms of large load customers, the the big news in this quarter is we did submit our large new load tariff with the MPSC in March 2026.

Certainly, a lot of questions about data centers and protecting customers. If you take a look at our large new load tariff, that is definitely what the intent is, not only protect customers and the company, but also just give the the guidelines in terms of where we're going to go if, in fact, we can serve large load.

That was a significant development during the quarter. I think the rest is relatively the same in in Montana and South Dakota.

We're ready to move forward if, in fact, that we get the large load tariff in Montana, but we're ready today with ability to serve large load in South Dakota. Regarding that, I mentioned earlier, we're seeing some demand.

We were disappointed we were not able to achieve any sales tax relief from a data center perspective in South Dakota, but we're still seeing quite a bit of interest in South Dakota nonetheless, and so we'll continue to be work with folks to see if we can come to any agreements there anytime soon. In terms of the three parties that we're working with, I'm sure many of you read SABEY has had some issues procuring the land necessary for their data center.

They continue to work through that issue, and we're certainly being patient with them in that process. Atlas continues to move along the process necessary to get from development agreement to ESA.

Then Quantica, of course, the big news as of late is our our development agreement with Quantica for their load, which goes from, 25 MW ramping up to 1.1 GW with a started targeted start date of early 2029. As is common in these transactions, and particularly at this phase in the process, a customer's not been named at this point and will certainly be named at the time point in time that we do, if in fact, we do enter into an ESA with that customer.

Colstrip, on slide 19, the reason I want to cover this slide, just to make sure there's there's no confusion about our intent with our two pieces of incremental Colstrip. I think everyone's aware we acquired the Avista portion of Colstrip to get to resource adequacy with that particular level, 222 MW.

We've procured the Puget 370 MW to go from 30% with Avista to 55% to make sure we have control over the Colstrip, and the future of Colstrip is in our hands instead of at the hands of some others who may not think about Colstrip in a long-term basis. That's really important for the state.

I think you also know Puget piece is currently in a FERC-regulated entity and will be there until we have an indication on our large new load tariff. If, in fact, that large new load tariff is actually put in place, it would be our desire to move that asset into our Montana state-regulated business.

Until we have an outcome on the large new load tariff, we will continue to have that as a FERC-regulated asset. I think many are aware the NorthWestern value proposition as a stand-alone business with a 4% dividend yield and our 4 to 6% EPS growth based upon a $3.21 billion capital program, which is divided relatively evenly between our transmission, distribution, and supply businesses, but in, executable and low-risk, critical capital to our customers, we could still, that investment, that growth rate, can achieve an 8 to 10% total return.

We do have incremental opportunities we believe that could help us grow faster than 6%, but we have to deliver on those. None of these opportunities I'm going to talk to you about today are in our current plan.

There's no data center in our current plan, and off to the left, in terms of capital investment, there's no FERC regional transmission, there's no incremental generating capacity other than the South Dakota capacity that we've talked about. This would be incremental above and beyond that.

Those are not in our plans today. If, in fact, we were to deliver on that, we could see total returns greater than 10%.

The other thing I would say here is back to the merger conversation. We believe we can execute on this plan even better, better together with our friends at Black Hills, and so, obviously, the merger continues to be important to even maximize more so that value proposition.

With that, that concludes our presentation, and we'll take any questions at this point in time.

Hi, team. This is Whitney Morcaldi on for Shah.

Good afternoon,

and

congratulations on the quarter. Hello.

Thank you.

In your remarks, you stated that there's a need for large loads to get things done on their end before getting to the ESA stage. Does the recent SABEY land situation reinforce the need for stricter milestones just around site control, permitting, before NorthWestern really begins to treat a project as part of its planning baseline?

Then I have a follow-up.

I think I would say in this context, initially when we wanted to file the large load tariff, the intent was for us to take an ESA with one of these large load customers and jointly go in and talk about the large load tariff. One of the things we want to do is make sure that we continue to work with these parties.

It's going to take a while, I believe, to get ultimately a resolution of the large load tariff. In the meantime, we'll be able to continue to work with these three developers on all the necessary things they need to do and we need to do to ultimately bring us to an ESA position.

Yes,

that actually sounds pretty good. Then just to move on to just thinking about large load numbers, today's update was notably stronger just on the aggregate level with demand tied to the three large load customers now scaling to 1,500 by 2030 versus the prior 1.1 GW framing.

Can you help bridge what's actually driving the increase from the prior outlook? I understand that it's mostly Quantica, but is it better visibility on existing counter-cards or just a broader change in how you're underwriting the pipeline?

The primary change here was specifically to Quantica. I think we had something in the 500 range for them, obviously 1.1 gig from them today.

I think the change is primarily associated with Quantica.

Sounds good. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Whitney.

Hey, Aidan. Hey.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the time today.

Maybe just going back to the large load front. Clearly, you've demonstrated some good progress on getting your third development agreement this quarter.

I guess ahead of ESAs, I'd be curious to hear what the latest resource planning assumptions are for each of these projects and if you could comment on what NorthWestern's ability is to participate in generation opportunities. I think in the past, Brian, you mentioned build-own-transfer as an opportunity, but would appreciate if you could just tee it up, where we are today and kind of walk through the playbook of what utility participation looks like at this time.

Geez, Aidan, that's a great question, and I can talk about this for about half an hour, but I will try to keep it as brief as I can. We definitely would like to participate.

I think one of the things I've talked about in the past is concerns about procurement rules in Montana in terms of IRPs, RFPs, and pre-approval. It's a long process, and our data center partners certainly would like to move faster than that.

One of the things that we're looking to do with them is to say is there ability to participate in some former fashion through a build-own-transfer process? I think you've heard data centers say, "We'd rather be served by the utility through a portfolio than stand-alone behind-the-meter resources."

That's ultimately what we'd like to do, but our procurement rules and their desire to move quicker is going to be tough. I think we're going to have to work together and try and necessarily find a way to do that.

Obviously, the Puget interests are available, if you will, for large load tariffs, so that's certainly helpful. Our existing portfolio is really there to serve our existing customers, but the Puget 370 portion certainly can help.

Our long-term IRP does have some cases associated with data center build-out, but it would have to be in the back half of some of these opportunities. We will work with each of these developers in their resource planning, and ultimately come together where we can participate together, but certainly on a lesser interest maybe than some utilities who have procurement rules that allow them to actually provide all of these resources.

Again, we want to participate certainly as much as we can from a generation perspective, and we'll plan to do as much as we can there with the timing we have. Remember, there's going to also be a tremendous amount of transmission opportunities associated with this as well.

We're excited about our ability to invest along with our development partners from a data center perspective.

Great. Thanks for going through that.

Then just one more question on my end. Wanted to pivot to the regulatory front.

Just any thoughts on the upcoming Montana commissioner elections and how this might influence your strategy in the state?

In terms of our strategy in the state, Aidan, I would put it this way: we don't have a strategy in the state in terms of what commissioner's ultimately elected. We're obviously going to work with whoever gets elected, and wants to obviously with the commission do the right things for our customers in Montana.

If you have a question regarding what the races are looking like, I could certainly go there, but I'm not necessarily sure specifically what your question is there.

I guess just the filing cadence, how you kind of think about that as the election kind of gains momentum into this fall, and just thoughts on that.

Aidan, I think there's always lots of things that go into our filing cadence. We've been very clear, and obviously being a state with elected commissioners, all three of ours actually, that regardless of when elected commissioners may come or go, we're going to need to recover our costs.

We're investing significantly to serve our customers in Montana, those are going to be fairly frequent cadences. While there is an election, there's two seats up for this year, one with one terming out and the other with a commissioner running for reelection.

Either way, we're going to continue our cadence of needing to recover costs. It's historic rate making in Montana.

I alluded to the fact that '23 test period, '24 known and measurable filing, and it's 2026, end of April, I think, and we still don't have a final outcome, we're going to need to work within that historic rate making context and keep filing. While the elections may come and go, it doesn't necessarily change our broader strategy of recovery.

Great. Makes sense.

Appreciate the insight. See you guys at AGA.

Thanks, Aidan.

See you, Aidan.

Hey, everybody. Good morning.

Good afternoon.

Hey, Chris.

Hey, Chris.

Crystal, was that the largest weather deviation from normal you've ever had?

Funny you ask that question, Chris. We're actually prepared for that one.

I think first quarter of 2019, we actually had a slightly larger deviation, and that one happened to be a colder weather event. We actually saw incredibly cold weather that winter.

We did go back and take a look, it isn't the most material weather impact, but overall average warmth, I would tell you, between both Q4 and Q1, I would suggest that was probably the most significant we've seen. Right.

Brian, you said you would discuss how the races are going, how are they going?

I think I would say that we have a commissioner up for election in both South Dakota and Nebraska, and in terms of primaries there, relatively quiet. What I can see in Montana, I know Commissioner Dr.

Bukacek has got two Republicans running against her in the primary there, and I think an unchallenged Democrat. It's early innings here in terms of what we can say there.

The Pinocci seat is open, and there are a couple Democrats running for that seat, and I think an unchallenged Democrat. Again, regardless, Chris, obviously whoever gets elected we're comfortable working with, and we'll continue to watch.

As we sit here today, I think the primaries are coming up in the June timetable, and the time period for others to get into those races in Montana, I think, is past. Stay tuned.

Okay. Given the speed that Montana sort of operates at, I think when I look at your sort of diagram of merger approval expectations, certainly the other states operate in sort of a more normal kind of timeline for decisions, but Montana is particularly slow.

Given that the hearings start the middle of next month, if you just took a rate case, for instance, as an example, it could be many, many months following the hearings before you get orders. Is there any reason you have some confidence in getting approvals in Montana by the end of the year?

Thanks, Chris. It's a good question.

Obviously we say the latter half of 2026. We don't know what the ultimate outcome will be, and we hope to require certainly the appropriate amount of votes in order to get a good outcome.

The reason I think the speed of that outcome should be relatively quickly, for two reasons. One, the important intervenors, if you will, our large customer group, obviously the Montana Consumer Counsel, and obviously you saw a handful of other intervenors have agreed and settled here.

In essence, we've gotten to a point where people are comfortable with the merger such to be in a settlement with us. That's the first reason.

I think we've taken a lot of the issues, if you will, off the table. We have two intervenors that really remain that we need to have a hearing with, have contested issues.

I think the fact that we've got a lot of progress from these settlements should help in the speed. The second thing I'd say is there's a $10 million benefit that will accrue to customers shortly after the merger, and I think I would expect that the commission would want that benefit to get to customers as quickly as it possibly can.

I would think, taking those things into consideration, I'd like to think this would move faster than slower.

Okay. You were talking about wanting to take an ESA with you to the commission to talk about the large load filing.

Is there not enough precedent in other states? There have been some really good mechanisms built into particularly Southern states and some of the Midwest.

Some take years, some for adding new resources. Is that not enough to be able to take some of that precedential evidence to the commission, good enough relative to being able to take a customer specifically?

I have two things, Chris. First and foremost, the nice thing about the utility space is we do see what our neighbors do, and we think we've taken really the best of all of the large load tariffs that we've seen out there, and I think you've seen kind of a middle of the fairway proposal that's in line with what you've seen elsewhere in the industry and in one that's in such a position that it protects customers.

The second thing I'd say is that we were at a point in time, I believe that we would had an ESA some time ago, as SABEY's run into some land issues that we were not aware of until here most recently. I think the timing of a large load tariff and that ESA, we thought they would be about the same time, and why not bring that ESA with it into that large load tariff?

There's a lot of questions out there, Chris, about how we're thinking about data centers and how we're going to protect customers. We felt this is in the best interest of everybody for that dialogue to make this large new load tariff filing.

You're right, if you think about it, it's very, very similar to the other protections utilities are seeking for their customers, and so that we certainly had an opportunity to look at what others are doing.

Chris, I would just add on our filing, for those who don't read the devil in details of filings, it is a good spot to be in because you can reference all these states that have already found a path to making sure there's not cost shifting, reasonable stranded asset protections. Our framework does exactly that and does specifically benchmark all those other tariff filings that have gotten there.

I think it brings us to a point that there's a great basis to your question there that the commission can consider without having a specific customer contract to look at, and hopefully we will have one of those soon, but they can consider that tariff framework provides adequate protections for customers in the state while allowing for the great benefits that you could see on needed system investment that a large load customer should pay for that.

Maybe I could rephrase the question a little bit. Obviously you guys see what everybody else is doing, but sort of the rhetoric that you've heard throughout certainly last year quite a bit seem to suggest that maybe some of the commissioners in Montana had not sort of been following how these other jurisdictions were going and the protections that are provided and the customer benefits provided.

Do you think they're watching?

I can't speak for the commissioners. My expectation they and the staff are following what's happening in other states.

I certainly would hope so. I just like them to understand that what we're trying to do, and as Crystal also pointed out, we're trying to do something similar protections that have already been done and accepted in various states.

I think testimony's certainly provided to give examples of that.

Sure. Like you said, the settlement in Montana for the merger has benefits.

It's not just protections, there's customer benefits that come from this as well that you would think they would want to speed along to customers. Anyway,

Chris, I'd argue in all three states, obviously it's credits in Montana, but even the moratorium in South Dakota and Nebraska provides protections for customers in all three of those states.

Right. Appreciate the call.

Thank you.

Thanks, Chris.

Thanks a lot. Congratulations on a good quarter.

Starting with sort of Quantica, over what period of time would it take for them to reach 1,100 MW?

That's a good question, Paul. From a ramping perspective, I think about 2 years.

Starting in '29 and about 2 years.

I think our materials show around 2031 they'd be at full ramp.

Great. Then when I think about your 4 to 6, and the fact that no data centers are included in the current 4 to 6, would SABEY and Atlas keep you within the 4 to 6, or would you expect that SABEY and Atlas could put you above sort of the 4 to 6 EPS growth?

Paul, the way I would answer that is each of these deals are going to be specific to the needs of the customer and what's the needed investment that will be driven by where that customer's located, where they want to be. We've consistently said, a, we can't specifically quantify it until we get to an agreement with them and can then clarify what that impact is to earnings, but all things considered equal, it certainly pushes us upwards in the range.

Then

should we assume that the Avista portion of Colstrip would likely be the source of generation that would serve SABEY and Atlas?

No, we shouldn't assume that. The Avista portion I think you may recall, and Paul, we talked about this for some time at this company, we certainly did not have the appropriate reserve margin in our business.

We're not resource adequate. The Avista piece got us to resource adequate to serve our existing customer needs.

The Puget piece, remember that, as I described earlier in the call, that's got us from an ownership perspective at Colstrip that made us more comfortable that we had control certainly over the future of Colstrip, but that 370 not necessary for customers today, nor did we want to burden our customers with $30 million of operating costs for an asset they don't need today, but that 370 is available to serve large load customers.

Okay. Then if the Puget piece serves those customers, what potential other spending would you see that would be associated with SABEY and Atlas if they were to come online?

You're speaking specifically here from a generation perspective. Obviously, there's going to be transmission investment, other investment necessary to support that.

I think, as Crystal pointed out, hey, when we have an ESA, we'll be able to talk a little bit more about that.

Paul, I would also add that our large load filing, that framework, the premise is that each customer would pay the current embedded rate in the large load tariff and that you would surcharge for any incremental investment, such as transmission or generation. The other way to think about that is they would come on paying the rate that is set at each base rate case, that sets the floor of rates they would pay and contribute to the system, and then beyond that, we would be able to surcharge based off each individual customer's needs.

That's where you get to the question you're going to of how do you think about this and model the opportunity, which is when we are able to sign a specific ESA, we'll know what that needed incremental investment might be.

Great. Then how realistically would you serve the Quantica load if it were to ramp beyond sort of what's available out of the Puget piece of Colstrip?

I think

in that timetable that they're talking about, as we talked about in our current IRP, our base plan didn't talk about serving data centers, but we had scenarios where data centers are included, but I think, in essence, for us to participate on the back end of that, we're going to have to, maybe catch the back half of that 2031 with some generation. I think in our discussions with them, they're going to have to bring their own generation, and particularly for the '29 and '30, and I'm going to guess from their needs, all of that load, certainly a good portion of '31 as well.

We'd like to participate, but it's going to be in the back end, and we'd like to make sure and what they do build, we would like to have the opportunity from a build-own-transfer in anything they build.

Great. My last question has to do with, I think, the large customers suggested that they wanted to see you pursue greater integration of your system with Black Hills post-merger.

Can you maybe give us an idea of the type of integration work that you think would make sense to better serve the customers of both systems?

I would think from a generation needs to serve our customers, I think the generation closest to our customers are likely to continue to be built in our service territory. The biggest opportunity out of the blocks would be looking at Path 80 from a transmission interconnection perspective.

I've shared that in the past as one of those paths, but I think, as we continue to look at North Plains Connector and other opportunities for regional transmission, being able to be combined with Black Hills certainly, I think, gives us better opportunities to participate in all of the regional opportunities we're looking at.

The kV size of that line and how many miles roughly would that be in terms of construction?

North Plains Connector, we're talking about a 10% or a 300 MW interest, and I'm not sure what's publicly stated in terms of the dollar amount associated with that project. As we sit here today, it was a pretty sizable investment for us.

We're evaluating that. We're evaluating, of course, continue to invest in the Colstrip transmission line and the upgrades associated there.

Paul, we're looking at our Montana to Idaho opportunity in terms of investment there, and also Path 80, obviously, being able to connect ourselves between Black Hills and in our system. We have a slide associated with that regional transmission we've shared in the past in terms of the dollars associated with that.

We're still in relatively early phases of development, and until we get to certain stages there, we're going to probably stay away from sharing what dollar amounts would be. We think those investments would be.

Great. Thank you so much.

Appreciate it, Paul. Thanks, Paul.

I appreciate the comment earlier about a great quarter. I just want to say this.

You think of the progress thus far on the merger, the shareholder vote, the three settlements, I just want to thank my team, and I want to thank the Black Hills team, great coordination to make that happen in the timetable that we have. Great work here at NorthWestern to not only be able to make progress on the merger, but to deliver all the other things we're talking about here on this quarter and to continue to serve our customers as well as we do each and every day.

Really, really proud of our group and the great quarter we've had. Thank you very much.