NorthWestern Q2 2026 Earnings Report

NorthWestern EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.50
• Consensus EPS: $0.42
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.08
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.40

NorthWestern Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $392.60 million
• Expected Revenue: $386.22 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$6.38 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +14.60%

NorthWestern Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 7/29/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, July 30, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 3:30PM ET

NorthWestern (NASDAQ:NWE), doing business as NorthWestern Energy, is a regulated electric and natural gas utility serving customers in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The company provides essential energy services to residential, commercial, industrial and governmental customers across its service territories.

NorthWestern Energy’s operations include electricity generation, transmission and distribution, as well as natural gas transmission, storage and distribution. Its generation portfolio includes a mix of owned facilities and purchased power, with resources that include hydroelectric, coal, natural gas and renewable energy.

The company traces its roots to 1923 and is headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. NorthWestern Energy operates as a vertically integrated utility in portions of its service area, managing infrastructure and energy delivery systems intended to provide reliable service across the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains. Brian Bird serves as president and chief executive officer.

NorthWestern Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Adjusted second-quarter EPS rose to $0.50 from $0.40 a year earlier, driven by improved base-rate recovery, new Montana rates, Puget Colstrip sales, and higher transmission revenue.
• Positive Sentiment: NorthWestern reaffirmed its 2026 adjusted EPS guidance of $3.68–$3.83, along with long-term rate-base and EPS growth targets of 4%–6%; its $3.2 billion 2026–2030 capital plan remains unchanged.
• Positive Sentiment: The proposed Black Hills merger received Nebraska, South Dakota, FERC, and shareholder approvals, leaving Montana as the primary outstanding regulatory approval. Management expects a Montana decision in roughly 90–120 days, potentially between mid-October and mid-November.
• Negative Sentiment: Incremental Colstrip ownership contributed $0.12 of operating costs in the quarter, including $0.05 of unrecovered expenses, while the existing PCCAM tariff waiver is insufficient to recover Avista-related O&M costs. Management may need a future rate review to place the asset into base rates.
• Neutral Sentiment: Data-center and other large-load opportunities remain active, but management emphasized there are no guarantees and is currently targeting energy supply agreements with two of three named developers by year-end. Community opposition, land procurement, transmission constraints, and tariff approvals remain potential obstacles.

Presentation

[Operator]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the NorthWestern Energy second quarter 2026 financial results webinar. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star-one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star-one again. I will now hand the conference over to Travis Meyer, Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations Officer. Travis, please go ahead.

[Travis Meyer, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Officer at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thank you, Kendra. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining NorthWestern Energy Group's financial results webcast for the quarter ended June 30th, 2026. Joining us on the call today are Brian Bird, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Crystal Lail, Chief Financial Officer. Brian and Crystal will walk us through the results and provide an overall update on the great progress we've made this quarter. Before handing the call over, however, a few reminders regarding today's call. 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 will direct you to the disclosures contained within our SEC filings and the safe harbor provisions included on the second slide of this presentation.

[Travis Meyer, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Officer at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Also note that this presentation includes non-GAAP financial measures and information regarding the pending merger transaction. See the non-GAAP disclosures, definitions, and reconciliations in the merger-related disclosures in the appendix of today's materials. The webcast is being recorded. An archive replay will be available shortly after the event and will remain active for one year. Please visit the financial results section of our website to access the replay. With those details behind us, I'll hand the presentation over to Brian Bird for his opening remarks.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thank you, Travis. For recent highlights for the quarter, we reported GAAP diluted EPS of $0.40 and a non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.50. We are also affirming our 2026 earnings guidance range of $3.68-$3.83, and also affirming our long-term rate base and EPS growth rate targets of 4%-6%. Regarding the merger, during the quarter, we received approvals from the Nebraska PSC, the South Dakota PUC, and FERC. We also had our Montana hearing, and the final briefing is now completed, and we're awaiting the final order. Lastly, in terms of dividend, we declared $0.67 per share payable September 1st, 2026. You might note there's a change in the payment date and August 17th record date to make sure we align with Black Hills Corporation's dividend dates, which was intended to simplify the closing mechanics in the merger.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

With that, I'm going to hand it over to Crystal to cover the second quarter financial review.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thank you, Brian. I will begin my comments on slide seven. In my comments today, I will cover our second quarter results, our 2026 earnings outlook, and our capital plan. As Brian mentioned, for the second quarter, we delivered GAAP earnings of $0.40. That $0.40 includes merger-related costs related to incremental Colstrip ownership, and weather impacts. On an adjusted basis, we delivered $0.50, which reflects a $0.10 increase from 2025. Moving to slide eight. On a year-to-date basis, we have GAAP earnings of $1.43 versus $1.60 in the prior period. On an adjusted basis, that's $1.81 versus $1.62. I'll remind you that we started off the year with an unseasonably warm winter, reflecting a significant adjustment to adjust out that weather impact for Q1 impacting our year-to-date results.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Slide nine moves to a bit more of the key drivers for the quarter in particular. Key drivers include improved margin, net of weather, offset by higher costs, depreciation, and interest expense. Increased operating costs includes $0.12 from incremental Colstrip ownership, which we spoke about a lot on our Q1 call as to the impact of us owning those assets and the importance to resource adequacy. Moving to slide 10, I'll discuss in more detail our margin impact, including the $0.38 improvement over the prior period. Margin for the second quarter reflects new rates in Montana. We'll remind you that we implemented rates in the rate review from 2024 in May of 2025 toward the end, you can see the continued improvement from that and impacting the first half of the year for us.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

It also reflects the sales from the Puget Colstrip interest and growth in transmission revenues. Moving to slide 11 to address our adjusted second quarter earnings. Again, as I alluded to, while the first quarter had a very significant weather impact, we returned to a closer to normal impact here. You'll see weather was unfavorable by $0.01 versus normal. The quarter also included $0.04 of merger costs and $0.05 of operating expenses from Colstrip that were not recovered. These adjustments moved from a $0.40 on a GAAP basis to $0.50 delivered on a non-GAAP adjusted basis versus $0.40 in the prior quarter of 2025 as compared, again, noting that that growth was really driven off of improved base rate recovery versus last year. Moving to slide 12.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

As Brian indicated, we are pleased with our start to 2026. It is in line with our expectations, and we are reaffirming our guidance. We have executed any financing plans for the year and expect that to not have an impact in the back part of the year. Moving to slide 13 and concluding my comments, our capital plan of $3.2 billion from 2026 through 2030 remains on track and unchanged and is driven by the essential investments we need to meet our customers' needs. This plan does not include any incremental investment that may be driven by additional opportunities related to regional transmission growth or serving large loads. We are excited to continue pursuing those opportunities. With that, I will turn it back to Brian for a further business update.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thanks, Crystal. My comments on Page 15, specific to the merger with Black Hills and the benefits to stakeholders. We certainly have talked quite a bit about the benefits to shareholders, and certainly want to thank all of those who voted on the approval from a shareholder perspective of the transaction and acknowledge the overwhelming support. That also took place in the second quarter. Also opportunity on this page, in the center of the page, also remind folks that there is also substantial long-term value for customers.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Not only are we bringing together two strong teams from a service perspective, we are going to continue to provide great service on a going-forward basis on a combined basis. Not only that, any benefits that are accrued for putting these two companies together from a cost savings perspective, that will ultimately accrue to customers in future rate reviews. Moving forward to Page 16.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

If you think about the timeline, we now have all the necessary approvals other than the MPSC Commission's approval. As you note on this page, you see a lot of green checks. Matter of fact, then like we said earlier, shareholder approval, FERC, Nebraska, South Dakota, and you think about what was all done in the second quarter, it was a pretty busy quarter from a merger perspective. We also, as we sit here today, we are working extremely hard with our friends at Black Hills from an integration planning perspective. So we are prepared, we will be prepared if in fact we do get approval from the Montana Commission to close and actually start providing the benefits of the merger to our customers and other stakeholders.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Speaking of the decision, waiting on a decision from the Montana Public Service Commission, we note on this slide that that is in the fourth quarter. I think people understand from the timing that is in front of the Commission that we believe that upon our filing our briefing in mid-July, that we would see a decision sometime in 90 days. They can extend another 30 days. 90-120 days, we should see a decision. That should mean a decision sometime between mid-October and mid-November. We are certainly cautiously optimistic about that decision and working really hard so that we are prepared to provide benefits to stakeholders on a going-forward basis if in fact we get that approval. Moving forward to data centers. We continue to work hard on the data center process on page 17.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I think you can see some change in the high-level assessments. We're still very active in terms of folks looking at primarily Montana and South Dakota from a data center perspective. More importantly, we continue to work with those folks that we have development agreements with and striving to get to ESAs with those parties. As I mentioned on the prior quarter's call, I noted no guarantees, but I mentioned on that call, and I do it again, no guarantees here. We still expect to have ESAs with at two of those three parties. Reason two of those three, I said three the last quarter, two parties, Quantica and Atlas, we still believe by year-end.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

The issue where we sit here today with Sabey is they still are dealing with land procurement items, and so until that happens, it's difficult to say we would have an ESA done with them by the end of the year as we sit here today. We continue to work with all three parties and those parties in the, both the data center request and high-level assessment to continue to move forward to ultimately have data center load that we can provide in Montana and South Dakota. Moving forward, just a little bit more on large load customers. I think you're also aware in March of this year, we did submit our Large New Load Tariff. The hope at that time when we filed it, we'd be filing it with an ESA. We did not.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

We wanted to make sure that people were aware that we're trying to protect customers with this large load tariff, so we wanted to get that in front of the commission. It's there for people to see. In addition, we'd like to, when we do sign an ESA, file that ESA with the Large Load Tariff and ultimately have a decision on that ESA as well. In South Dakota, any new large load customers, we require incremental capacity, but we do have an Infrastructure Rider there to help us with generation cost recovery. The South Dakota PUC already has an established large load tariff that we can serve large load customers with. The one issue with South Dakota continues to be the sales tax issue on equipment purchase, and we're hopeful in the upcoming Legislative Session, that issue will be dealt with.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

On the right-hand side of the slide here, I continue to show from a megawatt perspective, each of those three entities in the development stage. Nothing's necessarily changed there. We continue to forge ahead with them on their current plans. Lastly, on Slide 19 is our standalone value proposition. With an approximate 4% dividend yield with our base capital plan, we can achieve a 4%-6% EPS growth, ultimately today provide an 8%-10% total return. If we're able to take an opportunity and execute on data center and other large load opportunities for regional transmission and any incremental generating capacity, we should be able to grow at a faster rate, and above the 6% range. That, plus that dividend yield I talked about earlier, around 4%, we could see total returns greater than 10%. Obviously, that's our standalone proposition.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

As we sit here today, we think we could be able to deliver a 5%-7% EPS growth on a combined basis in our merger with Black Hills. That's ultimately what we believe is the best thing we can do from a shareholder perspective. As I mentioned earlier, another thing we really want to do for customers, particularly in this day and age where affordability is a key issue, we want to make sure we continue to be as efficient as we can, and even more so on a merged basis, and provide those cost-saving benefits to customers on a going-forward basis. With that, I'll turn it back over to Kendra to conduct the Q&A session.

[Operator]

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star-one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star-one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question from the line of Aidan Kelly with J.P. Morgan Securities. Aidan, your line is open. You may now go ahead.

[Aidan Kelly, Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities]

Thanks. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for the time today.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thanks, Aidan.

[Aidan Kelly, Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities]

Yeah, just want to hone in on the Quantica project first. I think many are focused on the quoted 7.2 GW interconnection request laid out there, which is clearly a substantial number. I understand when you capacity adjust, it could be closer to the 3 GW range, but still clearly implies some upside beyond phase one, what you've disclosed. Would just be curious to hear your take on the probability of realizing the full 7 GW and any physical considerations that come to mind here.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I put in this context, Aidan, I don't want to speak for Quantica here. I think, as you noted on the document we shared here, 1.1 GW is what we're talking about from a Quantica perspective. I think we all need to have success at these lower gigawatt levels. If we're ultimately in an ESA perspective and we're moving forward with Quantica, we'll let them talk about their relative success and how to ultimately build up to that level. As we sit here today, we're focused on the 1.1 GW.

[Aidan Kelly, Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities]

Understood. Thanks, Brian. Then just maybe wanted to ask a high-level question on the Colstrip ownership pieces. In the 10-Q, you guys lay out that the PCCAM tariff waiver was insufficient to contribute to the recovery of the O&M for the Avista share. Could you just remind us on the action plan for getting better protection on these costs? How are you thinking about the timing there?

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Hi, Aidan. I'll take that one. A fair question. We've laid out the impact year-to-date, and we do have a tariff waiver currently for how the impact of those sales flows through PCCAM. If you listen to the merger hearing, you would have heard a lot of commentary from the Commission on their overall support for Colstrip and their view on what that asset means to Montanans in keeping costs low. Our action plan eventually is to file a rate review and put that asset into base rates where it should be. The thing I would mention and remind you all of is we are waiting for a motion for reconsideration on our 2024 rate review. By my clock here, we're close to the last day of July of 2026. We need to see that order.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

We're continuing to invest significantly in Montana, to your point, an action plan for ultimately adjudicating that piece of Colstrip with the Commission. I think we'll need to file a rate review to address that, and that is something that we're considering timing of. Meanwhile, the PCCAM docket where that tariff waiver sits progresses. That was granted on an interim basis, and we expect that docket to move through probably timeline of Q4 of this year and maybe into early of 2027.

[Aidan Kelly, Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities]

Great. That's helpful. Thanks, Crystal. I'll leave it there.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thank you, Aidan.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thanks, Aidan.

[Operator]

Your next question from the line of Shar Pourreza from Wells Fargo Securities. Shar, your line is open. You may now go ahead.

[Whitney Mutalemwa, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Good afternoon, Brian and Crystal. This is Whitney Mutalemwa on for Shar.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Yep. Hi there.

[Whitney Mutalemwa, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Hey. I'm looking through the IRP materials, and they show available import capacity on your transmission path declining through 2028, even before accounting for the large load pipeline. Obviously, there's the North Plains Connector, and the utility has 10% stake that's still contingent on permits. Is that 300 MW enough to matter given how much load you're now discussing? Does the real transmission answer have to be a bigger Bright Horizon-led project rather than a minority position in someone else's line?

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I feel bad now I didn't include our regional transmission materials in our presentation, which we've certainly spoken about in the past. North Plains Connector is certainly something that we think is necessary. Our Montana-to-Idaho line that we're working with, we think is also crucial to provide capacity on a going-forward basis. Those are in addition to some other opportunities. On Path 8, which is our current Colstrip line that we share with other partners that serve the West, there are opportunities to expand the capacity on that line. That, as you would expect, is a little easier to do than other greenfield and projects, and even reconductoring. There's some work on that line that we think is extremely easy to do on a relative basis to other opportunities, but we're going to pursue those. We're also looking at Path 80 as an opportunity.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I'd argue that there's a lot of transmission capacity that we're going to need, particularly if there's going to be growth in the Pacific Northwest and certainly in Montana. We're excited about that opportunity and our ability to invest in transmission on a going forward basis.

[Whitney Mutalemwa, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Sounds good. Well said. Then just to squeeze in a tiny question, there have been a run of local pushback this quarter. There were the moratorium discussions in a couple of counties, a couple of ballot petitions. Just zooming out, is that changing how you and developers approach siting? More pre-engagement, more flexibility on location, that kind of thing? Or do you see it as pretty contained to a handful of communities? That will be all. Thank you.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Yeah, I could spend a half an hour talking on this topic. I would say it this way. We, as an industry, and certainly the data centers themselves, and the developers that may be between the utilities, and the data centers, we all need to do a better job in terms of communicating and working with communities to find out what the communities want, not necessarily what we think they want. I think there is a lot of misinformation about data centers. We believe data centers are going to be great things for our service territory, we think it's going to help our communities in so many ways. We're going to continue to be supportive of their efforts.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

We have to work collectively as a group and demonstrate benefits in a more concise way, so they understand that these are actually good projects that are going to help their communities. There's work to be done. I'd argue that's something that needs to be done in all states, not just the two states that we operate in from an electric perspective. I think it's more of an industry issue than just a NorthWestern Energy issue. There are certain states, of course, that support this, support data centers, and we can certainly name those states. Even those are running into some public pushback.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I think as we continue to educate folks around energy use and around water use, I think what has been recently done here in terms of an acknowledgement by utilities and data centers that we're not going to pass on higher cost to customers, that data centers are going to pay their own way. Those commitments are going to help deal with some of these issues. This is going to be a continuing issue for the industry for some time.

[Whitney Mutalemwa, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Well said. Thank you.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question from the line of Chris Ellinghaus with Siebert Williams Shank. Chris, your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Chris Ellinghaus, Analyst at Siebert Williams Shank]

Hey, everybody.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Hey, Chris.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Hey, Chris.

[Chris Ellinghaus, Analyst at Siebert Williams Shank]

Crystal, can you give us a breakdown of the weather adjustment by segment?

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Chris, I think that's in our appendix, but I'd remind you for Q2, it's only $0.01. It was pretty small as it relates to the quarter. Obviously, a much bigger impact for Q1 as we saw really mild weather there. Travis might have it off the top of his head.

[Travis Meyer, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Officer at NorthWestern Energy Group]

We haven't disclosed that, Chris, by segment. I assume you're looking between electric gas, South Dakota, Montana. We don't disclose that. That's something we can consider in the future.

[Chris Ellinghaus, Analyst at Siebert Williams Shank]

Okay. That'd be helpful. The weather seems like it was pretty warm for July, certainly across Montana, anyway, I saw. Crystal, can you give us any sense of how you see the progression of the two, Puget and the Avista Colstrip pieces through the rest of the year, particularly with what the third quarter weather looks like so far?

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Sure, Chris, and by the way, I will comment that I did see that you've come around to our way of thinking on the weather. I don't know if that's been a 10 or 15-year running conversation, but glad to see we finally got you there. The next question is, after a super mild winter weather in the whole Pacific Northwest and a normal, call it Q2 shoulder, what that had done, and we had talked a lot about market prices and the impact to finally being resource adequate in Montana, having assets where we could sell into the market and seeing really low market prices that obviously continued through the first and second quarters. I will tell you here in July that we have seen, I think we set a new balancing area record again. We've seen warmer temps and demand on our system.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I will tell you the market prices, for a variety of reasons that our supply folks could get into, there haven't been those big peaking events that you sometimes see in the market, but certainly an improvement as you're about through July here as to what we've seen for prices and the ability to cover our costs of those assets. What that continues into late summer and fall, I don't know that I'll be on the record for predicting the weather, since meteorologists can't seem to do it for the next day or so. I will say we did see some improvement here in July based off that demand and

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Temps being higher across the West, hope to see that continue as we go through the year. Obviously, we'd like to see those market sales impact our ability to cover those costs at Colstrip and hopefully earn back a bit of what happened in the first half of the year. I won't give you any predictions as to where that might be.

[Chris Ellinghaus, Analyst at Siebert Williams Shank]

Okay. That's helpful. Brian, one more thing. Now that Lord Voldemort is gone from the MPSC, do you still stick to the sort of 90-to-120-day expectation? Does that sort of slow or speed the process of the merger approval? How does that affect the large tariff docket also?

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Yeah, Chris, I assume you're talking about Commissioner Molnar. I don't think that has a bearing on the timing here. I think the 90 to 120 days still should hold. My expectation is, as folks know, there are many times when commissioners aren't present to vote, as long as there's a quorum, they can continue to vote on any matters, I expect that to be the case here as we move forward.

[Chris Ellinghaus, Analyst at Siebert Williams Shank]

Okay, thanks. Appreciate it.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thanks, Chris.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thank you, Chris.

[Operator]

Your next question from the line of Paul Fremont from Ladenburg. Paul, your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Paul Fremont, Analyst at Ladenburg]

Thanks. I guess I'd like to start with the high-level assessment pool, which seemed to have doubled to eight customers. Can we get a sense of sort of the megawatt size of demand that's in that queue?

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Paul, no, we haven't shared. Nor do we share who's in that queue, nor do we share the megawatts that folks are talking about at this point in time.

[Paul Fremont, Analyst at Ladenburg]

Well, how about in terms of with the customers doubling, should we assume that that also represents a doubling of the megawatt demand in that bucket?

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I'd say it this way, I wouldn't concern yourself too much with megawatts until you see development agreements.

[Paul Fremont, Analyst at Ladenburg]

It looks like two may have come from the data center request bucket, and that two of those customers would've come from somewhere else. Is that a fair way to look at it?

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Yeah. I'd say what happens many times when you get to assessment, some people fall away because they find out they've got a preliminary idea what the costs are going to be, and so they may fall away. I can't speak to how the bucket shifted from requests to the high-level assessment. Typically, what happens when you get to a certain point, you actually know your cost. You do see some folks fall away. You also see some folks that work pretty quickly through that process.

[Paul Fremont, Analyst at Ladenburg]

Maybe the last question for me. Is there sort of anything you can tell us about the geography of where those new high-level assessment customers are looking? Is it South Dakota or is it Montana?

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

I will say it this way. I think in those two earlier buckets, we're seeing interest in both states.

[Paul Fremont, Analyst at Ladenburg]

Great. That's it for me. Thank you.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thank you.

[Travis Meyer, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Officer at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thanks, Paul.

[Crystal Lail, CFO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thanks, Paul.

[Operator]

Your final question comes from the line of Rex Savage with Clear Street. Rex, your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Rex Savage, Analyst at Clear Street]

Hi. Thank you. I wanted to ask a version of a prior question on the Commissioner's status and so forth. It appears that Commissioner is challenging his removal in Lewis and Clark District Court. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about that. Plus, it appears the governor is maybe moving to replace him for this one-year period. Does that potentially change the 90-120 days? Related question is on Quantica, which was brought up, I believe, on the first question. That 7.2 in the filing did seem to activate one of the opposers on the merger docket to ask to reopen the record. Are we past that point? Do you believe that the Commission is just going to look at it as is?

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

From my understanding, I think the Commission's forging ahead here. I think they've done a good enough job through this process to say that this transaction's not about data centers. I think that conversation was had frequently during the hearing. I do not believe we're going to see a delay as a result of anything that's happening with Commissioner Molnar at this point in time or any incremental information that may have happened since the hearing.

[Rex Savage, Analyst at Clear Street]

Thank you.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Thanks, Rex.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Brian Bird for closing remarks.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

From a closing remarks perspective, I just want to say this again. I think we think about what we need to do as a company to grow and what's changing in the energy space. This merger is really important, not only obviously to the folks listening to this call today, but our customers and ultimately our employees. We need to be bigger. It's more of a competitive environment that we sit in today than utilities have seen in certainly in their first 100 years of existence. So it's critical that we move forward, we become bigger. It allows us to better serve our customers and all of you. We continue to be very, very focused on that, as do our friends at Black Hills, we hope to be talking about that with you, if not in October, sometime shortly thereafter.

[Brian Bird, President and CEO at NorthWestern Energy Group]

Until that next time, I want to continue to thank you for your support of NorthWestern Energy and obviously our friends at Black Hills. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect

Participants

Executives

• Travis Meyer, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Officer
• Brian Bird, President and CEO
• Crystal Lail, CFO

Analysts

• Aidan Kelly, Analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities
• Whitney Mutalemwa, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities
• Chris Ellinghaus, Analyst at Siebert Williams Shank
• Paul Fremont, Analyst at Ladenburg
• Rex Savage, Analyst at Clear Street