With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are mining, oil and gas exploration and services, pipelines, refining, and utilities.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Energy

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-160-PG&E

PG&amp;E is a major energy holdings company, providing electric and gas to 16 million customers across large swaths of northern and central California. The company has been ravaged by scandal in recent years, including criminal charges for inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health during a fire in 2019. In May, the company was hit with a nearly $150 million fine for neglect that caused wildfires and the mismanagement of power outages in recent years.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-189-PGE

The energy holding company owns the utility Pacific Gas &amp; Electric Company, which supplies energy to Northern and Central California. In January 2019, the utility and the holding company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of costs related to catastrophic wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that had been sparked by PG&amp;E power lines. Terms of a bankruptcy settlement were still under negotiation in mid-2020.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2017 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

World's Most Admired Companies

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

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The largest electric utility in California, Oakland-based PG&amp;E focuses on the northern and central portions of the massive state with 16 million customers across 70,000 square miles. With Silicon Valley in its region, PG&amp;E is forecasting demand growth from the data center construction boom potentially spreading throughout much of the state. Largely recovered from the 2019 bankruptcy filing resulting from wildfire-related liabilities, PG&amp;E is focused on transmission expansions and decarbonization. PG&amp;E manages a mix of hydropower, natural gas, solar, and battery storage assets.

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PG&E (PCG): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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PG&E

pg&e

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Desiree, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the PG and E Corporation First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Release. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer I would now like to turn the conference over to Jonathan Arnold, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for PG and E's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. With us today are Patti Poppy, Chief Executive Officer and Carolyn Burke, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We also have other members of the leadership team here with us in our Oakland headquarters. First, I should remind you that today's discussion will include forward looking statements about our outlook for future financial results. These statements are based on information currently available to management.

Some of the important factors which could affect our actual financial results are described on the second page of today's earnings presentation. The presentation also includes a reconciliation between non GAAP and GAAP financial measures. The slides along with other relevant information can be found online at investor.pgecorp.com. We'd also encourage you to review our quarterly report on Form 10 Q for the quarter ended 03/31/2025. And with that, it's my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, Patti Poppy.

Thank you, Jonathan. I'm pleased to be with you this morning to report out on another solid quarter of progress. Our core earnings per share for the first quarter are $0.33 While Q1 was a little light due to timing, we're confident in reaffirming our 2025 full year guidance range of $1.48 to $1.52 I'll remind you the midpoint of this range is up 10% from our 2024 results. There's also no change to our EPS growth guidance for 2026 through 2028, which remains at least 9% each year. I'll also remind you that with our December issuance, the equity to fund our $63,000,000,000 capital investment plan through 2028 is fully priced and behind us.

We're intently focused on affordability as an important outcome for both our customers and investors. In fact, our bills are down in 2025 compared to 2024, and we forecast them to go down again in 2026. I know a b October and wildfire risks are on your mind, and you're looking for signals that California is working toward a solution to improve upon what is already a solid foundation of financial risk mitigation. The way I see it and what we're standing for is that California's utilities must be able to attract sufficient high quality long term and low cost capital to ensure that we can power the increase in growth we're excited to be seeing. Also, at stake is the opportunity to power the clean energy transition, which our customers and our state are counting on.

We believe that an a b ten fifty four legislative solve in 2025 is what will produce the best long term affordability outcome for our customers. Based on active conversations in Sacramento, we expect a constructive legislative outcome yet this year. All of these elements I'm talking about are reflected in our power pyramid, a foundation of safety from our physical and financial protections, including AB ten fifty four, a PG and E that's providing affordable and resilient energy to our customers, and a decarbonized energy system powering California's growth. I am excited about several things ahead of us. First, submitting our general rate case that truly reflects the power of our simple affordable model.

Second, seizing the data center load growth opportunity, rapidly developing here in California for the benefit of our customers, driving even more affordability opportunities. And third, and perhaps most importantly, our continued execution of our performance playbook, delivering improving outcomes for our customers in safety, quality, cost, delivery every day. On May 15, we'll file our GRC covering the four year period 2027 through 2030. Our proposal will be a step in the process that will kick off a conversation about California's ambitions and expectations and how PG and E can best serve those goals. We're looking forward to demonstrating our simple affordable model as shown here on slide five.

As a reminder, our goal under the model is to stabilize bills, holding increases at or below inflation or two to 4%. While you'll have to wait until next month to see the filing, what I can share is that for our customers, it will reflect the benefits of the efficiency gains we've achieved in the past three years and most importantly, interrupting a pattern of double digit increases. You'll also see we continue to have abundant opportunities to deploy capital into quality infrastructure for our customers' benefit. On top of what we'll include in our proposal and not reflected in our conservative financial plan, there are even more opportunities for customer savings outside the GRC. These include interest cost savings from drawdowns on our $15,000,000,000 DOE loan guarantee facility.

This has the potential to save customers up to a billion dollars net present value over its life, achieving investment grade credit ratings, and adding more beneficial load growth from diversified sources, including data centers, electric vehicles, and building electrification. Turning to slide six, let's talk more about beneficial load growth. We've updated our data center project pipeline from the year end call, and as you can see, our pipeline has grown from 5.5 gigawatts to 8.7 gigawatts. We are privileged to serve California, including the Bay Area, which has the fiber network enabling speed and reliability for data center customers and also the density of talent needed to maximize the potential of artificial intelligence. We have 1.4 gigawatts in final engineering comprised of 18 projects.

To date, these have not been the mega data center projects designed to power large language learning models. Rather, the demand in our service area has been mostly from customers looking to power inference models, are driving value for their businesses. True Goldilocks demand, big enough to matter, not so big that it's a problem. What differentiates this opportunity in California is a diversified set of customers and projects, excess generation to power incremental load in the near term, and a regulatory approach which ensures that our existing residential customers will save money. We continue to estimate that for every gigawatt of new electric demand from data centers, customers may save between one to 2% on their electricity bill.

This is just some of the exciting work my team has been doing here at PG and E, and we've got more to come. We know that to best capture this customer benefiting load growth, we to attract high quality, long term, low cost capital. We trust our policymakers to understand this, and we want you to trust California policymakers too. Our team continues to work closely with key decision makers on wildfire policy improvements. At a high level, we're looking to build on the already strong existing state legislative framework, rebuild investor confidence, and ultimately make the model even stronger.

In our advocacy, we're making sure state leaders understand that addressing capital provider and rating agency concerns is critical to ensuring access to competitively priced long term capital. Addressing these concerns is also critical to delivering the most affordable solutions for our customers. As the legislative process continues, let me remind you of our existing physical layers of protection in place and shown here on slide eight. We're building infrastructure for purpose, a system that is safer and more resilient every day. In early March, we filed our twenty twenty six to twenty twenty eight wildfire mitigation plan.

With this proposed plan, we'll we will continue working to reduce wildfire risk attributable to vegetation or other objects contacting our power lines through both system resilience programs and operational programs, reduce risk during periods of severe weather and reduce the wildfire risk due to equipment failure through measures including pole mounted sensors to catch outages and ignitions before they occur, as well as pole clearing. There's nothing more important than ensuring public and coworker safety. Rebuilding PG and E's safety culture was one of the most important challenges when I joined the company in 2021. Back then, we were experiencing a coworker or contractor fatality on the job every ninety to one hundred days. That was truly shocking and a call for action.

I'm very proud to share that today, we are at 814 without a fatality, and that is the longest run-in over twenty five years, and we are still going. The practical fact is that I can't be on every job site ensuring our safety procedures are being followed. Rather, every day, my coworkers are showing up choosing to be safe, choosing to keep each other safe above all else. This is one of the most important proof points of the culture change that is happening at PG and E. Our system is safer, our hometowns are safer, and my coworkers are living our safety values every day on the job.

That's a culture of safety you can believe in. However, we will never be satisfied when it comes to safety, and we continue to work it every day. As you know, the safest job site is also the most productive one, and safety performance is a critical leading indicator for consistent financial performance. With that, I'll turn the call over to Carolyn.

Thank you, Patty, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'm pleased to cover three main topics with you. First, our quarter over quarter results second, a reiteration of our sector leading five year capital plan and our de risk financing plan and third, our continued execution against the simple affordable model. Starting here on slide nine, we're showing you our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings walk. Our core earnings of $0.33 are down $04 over 2024.

Recall last year in the first quarter, we had some unexpected tailwinds, most notably the increase in ROE from 10% to 10.7%. We were committed to redeploying that upside to the benefit of both our customers and investors, and we did. Most of our redeployment came through in 2024 in later quarters as we pulled work forward to derisk 2025. Without a similar tailwind this year, we are instead absorbing a lower ROE and dilution from our well timed December equity issuance. With line of sight on savings over the balance of the year, we fully expect to deliver our 2025 plan even while we look for opportunities to derisk next year.

This is what we mean when we say we ride the roller coaster so you don't have to. During the first quarter of twenty twenty five, the main positive driver was higher customer capital investment. This contributed $0.02 and that's net of the reduction in the authorized return on equity related to the phase two cost of capital decision. That's 10.28% this year compared to the 10.7% in effect for 2024. Non fuel O and M savings contributed a penny to our results, and you should expect to see this grow as we move throughout the year.

These items are offset by redeploying 2¢ to various programs, including those supporting risk mitigation, zero two from equity dilution, and zero zero three dollars of timing and other. Turning to slide 10. There is no change to our five year sixty three billion dollars capital plan through 2028. There's no shortage of customer beneficial work on our transmission and distribution systems, and we still see an incremental at least $5,000,000,000 of investment needs. And what's more, our growth is diverse with no single project accounting for more than 2% of the overall plan.

When it comes to incremental demand, it's important to remember we have a number of options or combinations thereof. We could add to our already robust plan. We could prioritize investment tied to connecting new load, what we're calling beneficial load growth, and or we could extend the duration of our sector leading rate based growth story. In other words, we have opportunities to make our plan bigger doing more for customers, make it better in terms of affordability, and longer in duration. Turning to slide 11.

We were very pleased to see the upgrade from Moody's in March, which brought the utility issuer credit rating to investment grade. We have more work to do at each of the agencies to get the parent company to investment grade, and that continues to be our focus. Our five year financing plan remains unchanged as shown here on slide 12. This is a strong plan built to support achieving investment grade ratings and prioritizing customer capital investment. While our debt needs have not changed over the five year period, we are modestly reducing our 2025 long term debt guidance by a half billion dollars as some of that has now shifted to 2026 due to a term loan extension we closed on earlier this month.

On the equity side, our December issuance put us back in compliance with our authorized regulatory capital structure ahead of schedule and prior to our cost of capital filing. We also benefit from our differentiated dividend payout. We believe 20% by 2028 remains an appropriate target, allowing us to retain a significant majority of our earnings and prioritize needed customer capital investment on our system. I'll remind you, our five year plan does not assume any savings from the DOE loan or achieving investment grade even though these are both near term priorities. As Patty mentioned, both would be affordability benefits for our customers versus the base plan.

Turning to slide 13, Executing against our simple affordable model is how we're making our industry leading capital growth affordable for our customers. We work each element each and every day. O and M savings, where I'm particularly proud of our track record exceeding our annual 2% target. Beneficial load growth, where the opportunity continues to grow, and efficient financing opportunities, which we aggressively pursue. Regarding our o and m cost reductions, we saved over $500,000,000 in 2023 and another nearly 350,000,000 in 2024.

And as Patty noted, we're excited to incorporate these savings into our GRC filing. Our ability to achieve these savings after absorbing inflation is a capability that is becoming more beneficial for our customers in the current uncertain economic environment. Our sourcing is primarily from domestic suppliers. Deploying our performance playbook, we intend to offset tariff related cost pressures and inflation. As you've come to expect from us, our goal is to manage through these ups and downs of the business, and this will continue to be our default and first line of defense.

That said, we also operate under a constructive California regulatory model, which has mechanisms specifically designed to address significant unanticipated items on a timely basis, including outside the rate case cycle. With respect to recession risk, our decoupled revenue model offers significant protection and our investment plans aren't built around any particular large project. Net net, California's regulatory construct combined with our lean operating system is a powerful buffer against economic headwinds. During the first quarter, the CPUC approved our settlement agreement to establish a non wildfire self insurance program. Assuming no claims, customers have the potential to save more than $600,000,000 through 02/1930 under this program.

This is another example of how we're working creative and innovative solutions on behalf of customers. We continue to see abundant opportunities to reduce costs in 2025 and beyond. Just take our capital to expense ratio as one proof point. While we've improved our ratio, we're still spending only 90¢ capital for every dollar of expense. Best in class is spending $2.40.

This remains a huge opportunity for us as we continue to drive l and m savings and invest in the most affordable infrastructure for our customers. Turning to slide 14. As I've said before, 2025 is a big year in terms of regulatory filings. During the first quarter, we submitted our 2026 cost of capital application supporting an ROE of 11.3%. We expect a final decision by year end with the new authorized cost of capital going into effect 01/01/2026.

Another constructive feature of California's regulatory model is the fact that our cost of capital is decided independently of our general rate case. And as you know, we'll make the GRC proposal on May 15, covering the period 2027 through 02/1930. Like Patty, I am very excited to prove out the simple affordable model for the benefit of our customers. We'll be advocating for an outcome which enables the right infrastructure investment and the right customer affordability. We also plan to file our ten year undergrounding proposal with our safety regulator before the end of the year.

I strongly believe that performance is power. We've been delivering on our sector leading capital growth plan, converting rate based growth into earnings growth, proving that what's good for customers is also good for investors. We continue to plan conservatively and deliver consistent predictable results. We do what we say. And on that note, let me end here on slide 15 with a reminder of our value proposition.

Consistent predictable performance serving our customers and delivering for investors. Ten percent rate base growth through 2028, '10 percent core EPS growth in 2025, at least 9% core EPS growth each year from 2026 through 2028, and bill increases held between 2% to 4%. And with that, I'll hand it back to Patty.

Thank you, Carolyn. Our simple affordable model is how we're executing on an industry leading capital growth plan serving California while stabilizing customer bills. Our proven wildfire risk mitigation performance that gets stronger still every day and our culture of safety being lived day in and day out is what gives me confidence that the culture we're creating here at PG and E is sustainable. We're excited about all the catalysts in front of us, resolving the a b ten fifty four uncertainty, realizing the promise of our simple affordable model through our upcoming GRC, reaching investment grade at the holding company, delivering on our growing large load story, drawing down on our DOE loan facility, extending our track record of O and M savings, and filing our ten year undergrounding plan. I've never felt more confident in the PG and E team and our ability to deliver for our customers and our investors.

With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Session. We do request for today's session that you please limit to one question and one follow-up question. We have allotted thirty minutes for Q and A.

And our first question comes from the line of Nicolas Campanella with Barclays. Your line is open.

Good morning. Hope everyone's doing well.

Morning. So a lot of questions on legislation. Patty, you said you expect a constructive outcome this legislative session and this year. Can you maybe expand on why you're confident that that's indeed happening this year just given the various things in front of the state legislature? And is there any chance that this is still kind of a multiyear effort?

Maybe you can kind of give us a flavor of what you're working towards, whether it's an extension and an increase in the fund size or clarity in the liability cap. Just what should we kind of be expecting here? Thanks.

Yeah, Nick. Thanks for the question. First, let me reflect what you said that the legislature does have a lot on their plate, and we respect their their need to do a lot of different things in their roles. What makes me confident is how important it is to get this fixed. You know, the a b ten fifty four construct is so important for all the constituents.

It's good for customers because it acts as a rate smoothing design, especially when you've got a prudent operator, and therefore, those costs are recoverable. The the fund acts as a very good rate smoothing device, and it the the fund also serves those who were harmed by wildfire. And so given that, we know that the legislature is attuned to the importance of a b ten fifty four. We also know how important it is to attract high quality, low cost capital so that we can continue to improve the affordability of energy in California. And so that's what makes me confident.

It's too important not to do. And we're we're confident that we can continue to to help advocate for the right kind of surgical changes to the strong existing construct. You know, Nick, I would love to, you know, say more about what we think the changes are gonna be, but this is a live ball, and it's very important that we don't get out in front of our legislators. They've got a lot of work to do. And so I'm I'm not going to, you know, address any specifics about how we think the construct is gonna change, but we do believe that a constructive outcome, will happen this year.

Absolutely. And and and understood on that. And then, you know, we're excited to see the rate case be filed here in the May. You know, when we look at some of your peers and the rate cases that they filed to the south of you and the outcomes that they've kind of received there or the ones that are still progressing, just maybe you can kind of talk about what you see as kind of the key differentiator in your upcoming case, whether it's kind of the level of the ask or the amount of O and M that you're gonna be able and efficiencies that you're gonna be able to kind of flow back to customers? How does this kind of compare to other cases that we've seen in the state?

Yeah. We're really excited about being able to bring forth our proposals for all the constituents. You know, we know this is a step in the process. Our general rate case proposal that we'll be filing on May 15 provides good choices for our decision makers to make. We know that our proposal will reflect the simple affordable model.

We know that our GRC must address a significant demand for infrastructure investments for a safer, reliable, clean energy system. And we know that by continuing to improve on our capital O and M ratio, ends up being the most affordable path for customers and still improving their service every day. And so we are excited about passing along the o and m savings that we've delivered over the last several years. You know, that's how it works. When you file a general rate case, you can start to reflect the improved operating and maintenance expenses and even the unit costs on the capital work.

And so we do feel like this this proposal is gonna be a mark in the in the sand of a new era. We're gonna get away from these double digit requests. We know that whatever we propose, the final outcome will be something less than what we propose, but we're prepared for that, and we've planned conservatively. But we we're gonna put forward some really great options for our decision makers and great choices to best serve our our customers and and get the best suite of outcomes that reflects ample capital capital investment that's good for customers that lowers their costs as well as all the operating maintenance savings. Now one thing to remember, and this is good news for customers, is the GRC and and what we'll be filing does not reflect the benefits of our DOE loan.

It doesn't reflect the benefits of investment grade. It doesn't, include the benefits of our beneficial load growth that we see coming. So all of those factors on top of what will be a very affordable proposal will be passed along over the coming years of the life of the general rate case. So we see bright skies ahead for our customers here at PG and E.

Our next question comes from the line of Shar Pourreza with Guggenheim Partners. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning, team. It's actually Constantine here for Shar.

morning. So continuing the discussion on the GRC, how should we be thinking about the $5,000,000,000 of upside CapEx in the context of the upcoming filing? Do you anticipate that the upside categories will be included in the filing, or do you see more incremental CapEx as part of separate recovery?

Well, keep in mind that in our $63,000,000,000 capital plan, we've got the first two years of the general rate case. And so then you've got a subsequent years, so that would be an addition to the to the capital plan. But also keep in mind that our FERC jurisdiction transmission investments are also not reflected in the GRC. So as we continue to say, we'll add capital to the plan when it's affordable for customers. And we know that due to our o and m capital ratio, we know that the capital investments can be more affordable for customers than all the annual expense as well as our reductions in o and m.

So we can add capital to the plan, but we also need to get it approved, and we wanna make sure that we spend in a disciplined way and that then we can finance that that work in the most affordable way. So all of those factors are what will determine what the ultimate outcome is in our longer term capital plan.

Yeah. I think I would just add, Constantine, as we think about that $5,000,000,000, remember, as Patty noted, most of it is or much of it does come in with transmission. But you shouldn't assume, as we've said before, that we would simply increase the size of our capital plan. We could look at making that plan better in terms of affordability so we could reprioritize other projects within that envelope, or we could make it longer, meaning we could extend the duration of our sector leading 9% to 10% rate based growth. So think about that in terms of, in terms of our capital plan as well.

Understood. And that leads into the second question, which is the data center pipeline update. How quickly do you believe that preliminary engineering can convert into construction projects? And maybe in other words, you see that incremental data center related CapEx moving into the 2030 CapEx plan once the GRC is filed. Is that the right time frame for an update?

Yeah. Great question. What you know, we're as we look at the, final engineering to construction, we're forecasting that about 90% of that 1.4 gigawatts will be built by 02/1930. So surely, we'll have to be spending, but most of the spend in that those areas are for transmission. So that gets filed to the FERC proceeding separate from the GRC.

But we'll be building on you know, building that pipeline through 2026 through 02/1930. And keep in mind what's wonderful about that new load growth is it actually helps to reduce rates. And so it's just such an important part of the story going forward that we can actually invest more capital and lower rates simultaneously. And I think that's a hard thing for some people to understand at first glance, but that's we're really excited about what beneficial load growth provides for our customers and the growth here in California. And so we do see that capital being built into the plan as we go forward.

And more specific to the preliminary engineering volume, the 7.25 gigawatts, would that kind of start moving into the final engineering phase and essentially into that 2030 time frame?

Yeah. Exactly, Nick. And or, sorry. Exactly, Constantine. We do see the pipeline moving into final engineering.

But keep in mind, not all of it's gonna go through. And I think that's the part that we wanna make sure is clear that some of this falls out as we go, and we're not banking, frankly, on any of it in our financial plan. This is all upside to the financial plan and upside to the affordability for customers on top of what we're already talking about holding rates at two to 4%. And so we will see that workflow in. Some of it will be before 02/1930.

In fact, we see substantial requests before 02/1930, but it goes on through 02/1935. So this could be an ongoing engine of affordability for our customers going forward. And again, some of it is speculative. They they put in their application. They do have to pay a significant amount of money to be in an application phase.

So it's not that there's no skin in the game. They've definitely put some skin in the game to apply. And as we provide them then their cost and timing, they'll make decisions. And we saw in our first cluster study that went through, we saw some some fallout, but we ended up with then now our current final engineering of 1.4 gigawatts. And so we see that there is definitely appetite here in the Bay Area to build out this data center mode.

Next question comes from the line of Richard Sunderland with JPMorgan Securities LLC. Your line is open.

following up on the data center questions. This is a significant jump in the application and preliminary engineering phase. Curious if you can share any feedback on what you're seeing on the ground, really thinking about, I guess, the cluster study approach last year and if this is an acceleration of activity overall or some response to those initial cluster study efforts?

Yeah. Great question. You know, we are seeing on the ground, I do believe there was a misunderstanding that we were out of power in Northern California. And once they realized that we were able through cluster study one to serve their needs at the times that they wanted, that did open up a real interest and really communicate to the market that we were open for business. And that's been exciting for us here at PG and E.

The team's been working really hard now. We've actually got a second cluster study that is not reflected in that 8.7 gigawatts. It's incremental even to that, and that's multiple gigawatts of more applications. And so we're being pretty disciplined about what we're calling an application. The cluster study is not complete, and so we're not at the stage that we will add those gigawatts into the plan.

But as we go through that second cluster study, we know that some of it will carry through. And what's exciting about Northern California, and this is why we call it Goldilocks, is that these are inference model size data centers. The bulk of them are the hundred megawatt or so inference model data centers. Imagine a a data center that's designed to do to serve a multiple tech companies who are using AI in their daily business, so they need more compute power. That's what we're able to serve.

So these aren't single silver shovel projects as we talk about. These are a variety of smaller projects that will go through because that demand for compute power is real, particularly here in the Bay Area where we have this density of technical talent who can leverage AI. So this trend is absolutely real for us. We're being conservative about how we're building it into the financial plan. But net and net, this will be so beneficial for our customers, and we're so excited about being able to power California's progress and lower rates by serving this new and growing large and compute power load.

Great. Thanks for the color there. And then shifting gears to the ten year undergrounding plan filing later this year. I know it's been a little bit of a process and a journey to get to that point. Can you speak a little bit to what you're focused on in the run up to that application?

Maybe some recent learnings over the past year or two in work across your system, and just how you think about that process going forward relative to expectations, you know, maybe at the start of all this?

Yeah. Look, we continue to stand that in the highest risk areas where they're most vegetation dense, undergrounding is the right permanent solution. It reduces 98% of the wildfire risk where it's deployed. And, for example, we expect that it will $465,000,000 in o and m savings and more than 280,000,000 in vegetation savings will be realized over the life of our first one thousand two hundred and thirty miles being underground during the GRC cycle, this existing GRC cycle. We wanna continue to do that high value, mitigating work.

And so we have to continue to share those benefits and savings and make sure that that is materially represented in our filing for our ten year plan. And so we'll be making that plan. You know, it's undergrounding some people think that undergrounding is a driver for why our previous rates were going up. We're I would tell you that only a dollar a month of our customers' bill is undergrounding today, yet $20 a month is vegetation management. That's the example of why that capital to o and m ratio is so important that we get that right here California and get back on track with utility peers who understand that when you deploy capital you can lower costs for customers.

Next question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin Smith with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, Patty and team. Thanks very much for the time. I appreciate it. Hey, maybe picking back up on the wildfire mitigate hey, good morning. Picking back up on the wildfire mitigation conversation, maybe just a little nuance here, but you added some statistics on idled and abandoned line activity.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on what you all have been doing on that? And more specifically, as you think about some of recent events here, how does that change your anticipated filing when you think about the safety certification review process and your future filings? How do you think about that all?

Yeah. Thanks, Julian. You know, we have had a robust induction prevention program. We we delineate between de energized lines and deactivated lines that are in place. So de energized lines that have no future use, we remove them.

And in fact, we've removed 64 lines that were de energized and had no future use. Now there are cases where you have deactivated lines, but you remain they remain in place because there may be a future use for those. Those are the ones that might have subject might be subject to induction risk. They don't always they aren't always subject to induction risk because maybe they're not near another power line. So we continue to mitigate and confirm that we've got the grounding right on those that are remaining.

And as a result of, you know, continual learning, every year, we learn something new. Every every incident, we learn something new. We've been definitely reviewing those remaining lines and confirming that we've got the safest configuration to prevent ignitions.

Got it. Excellent. Thank you for the nuance there. Appreciate it. And then just coming back a little bit to the conversation on data centers and kudos on making progress here.

Can you talk a little bit more about linking that back to affordability? I mean, put some meaningful move on the board against your earlier targets, right, this one gigawatt of demand. How does that put your bill increase target, right? You talked about this 2% to 4%. You talked about data centers helping ameliorate that number.

Any sense as it stands today, maybe even tentatively or as a sensitivity against that 2% to 4% based on what you're on track to do on data centers to push down bill numbers? I know you've alluded to it, I just want

Yeah. Very directly. We we have done the analysis that for a gigawatt of new demand of data center demand, we can spend up to $1,600,000,000 to serve that demand and still reduce every customer's rates by a percent. And so as long as we are disciplined in how we invest in the infrastructure and that we make sure that we get the cost allocation proper with the the large load customer, we can pass along savings to customers. We have not built that in yet to our financial plan because we don't wanna get ahead of ourselves.

We wanna plan conservatively. We'll deliver for customers. And as this new load materializes and gets final complete construction, those savings and that load then materializes on the system, then those savings start to pass through to customers, which is what makes us so excited. You know, we're gonna be filing this general rate case and showing that our proposal reflects our simple affordable model and keeping rates. Rate increases in the two to 4%.

That does not reflect this new large load. And so even though we're gonna be filing the the lowest GRC ask in a decade, we still have more savings that we can pass along to customers as a result of the new large load as well as the DOE loan as well as our credit metrics improving and getting to investment grade. There's this is really we're interrupting the pattern here in California for affordability for customers. We know our customers don't feel that yet, so there is doubt that we can deliver on this, but we are able to deliver, and we've delivered this year. Our our bills are lower this year over last year, and our bills are forecast to go down again in 2026.

And then you convert over to this new general rate case, and you keep rates increasing only nominally and then you add in beneficial load growth, Julian, things are bright here in California. We're gonna really help our customers believe in us again and really trust that we can deliver higher service, higher quality service at a fundamentally lower cost. And we can't wait for those numbers to start hitting the tape.

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

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Tough act to follow there with Julien. Just have one question And I think maybe to Nick's question earlier, you talked about maybe all the things going on and the legislature may be working for a solution for the wildfire fund. Do you think it's helping the process or like helping out showing the urgency to legislators on a cost of capital filing and also a rate case filing?

I know it's a busy plate there, but clearly, they're all intertwined. Is that, you think, helping out the process and maybe showing a sense of urgency to the legislatures?

Anthony, I think, there's no doubt that affordability is job one and, item one a in Sacramento and here, in Oakland for all of us at at PG and E. Affordability is job one. So at first glance, when you see a cost of capital filing, when you see a general rate case, it can appear that we're tone deaf to what's happening for customers. We wanna make sure that what we're reflecting is demonstrating how we can, in fact, lower costs for customers. That's why we we actually have to sing it from the mountaintop that the bills are lower this year than last, that we are forecasting bills going down again next year.

PG&E (PCG) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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