Black Hills Corporation Roars into 2025 with Strong Q4 Earnings and Promising Outlook
Black Hills Corporation, a leading energy company serving customers in eight states across the US, has delivered a strong performance in its Q4 2024 earnings, exceeding expectations and solidifying its position as a growth leader. The company's CEO, Linn Evans, outlined the highlights of its successful year during a recent conference call.
**A Year of Milestones**
In 2024, Black Hills Corporation achieved significant milestones, advancing its customer-focused strategy while delivering on financial commitments and regulatory initiatives. Key achievements include:
* Successfully serving the 19th consecutive year of increasing peak loads for Wyoming Electric, with a new record high demand of 318 megawatts * Investing over $800 million in core energy needs across its growing footprint * Delivering on earnings guidance despite mild weather and unplanned generation outages
"Even through challenges from mild weather and unplanned generation outages, our team's relentless focus on expense management put us right down the middle of the fairway with our guidance range," Evans noted.
**Strong Financial Position**
The company's financial position remains solid, with a well-executed capitalization target and successful completion of its financing plan. Black Hills Corporation maintained its investment-grade credit ratings throughout 2024, underscoring its financial stability.
"We achieved our capitalization target, successfully completed our financing plan, and maintained our solid investment-grade credit ratings," Evans highlighted.
**Promising Outlook**
Looking ahead to 2025, the company is guiding earnings in a range of $4 to $4.20 per share, with confidence in its strong capital forecast, incremental investment potential, and growth opportunities driven by increasing demand from industry-leading data center customers.
"Our updated financial outlook is provided on Slide 4," Evans noted, "and we are confident in our long-term EPS growth target of 4% to 6%, building on our solid financial position and growing data center demand."
**Growth Initiatives**
Black Hills Corporation continues to make progress on its growth initiatives, including:
* Clarity to its data center growth plan and service to support Meta's new AI data center beginning to ramp in 2026 * Final approval for its clean energy plan for Colorado Electric * Plans to finalize a new electric generation project for South Dakota Electric
The company also announced an increase of 4% in its dividend, representing 55 consecutive years of dividend increases.
**Ready Wyoming Expansion**
A highlight of the conference call was the energization of the initial phase of Black Hills Corporation's Ready Wyoming electric transmission expansion, a remarkable achievement in only two years after receiving approval for the project. This project enhances the company's ability to cost-effectively deliver energy for its customers and opens up additional opportunities for strategic growth in Wyoming.
Overall, Black Hills Corporation has delivered a strong performance in Q4 2024, with promising outlooks for 2025 and beyond."
