EVRG

Evergy is a fully-regulated Kansas/Missouri electric utility (~1.7M customers, 15,800 MW) — a low-risk, low-return business whose earnings power is set by regulators, not markets. The FY2025 numbers show exactly that: revenue dead flat at $5.71B (+0.0% YoY), net income $856M (-2.0%), diluted EPS $3.66 (-3.4%), and an 8.4% ROE that sits well below the 10.5% return the company is asking regulators to authorize — a sign it is under-earning against a growing rate base and living with regulatory lag. The balance sheet carries the weight you'd expect from a capital-intensive utility: $13.0B of long-term debt (+10.4%), only $19.8M of cash, and current liabilities ($3.70B) that dwarf current assets ($1.82B). Capex jumped 19.7% to $2.80B and now exceeds the $2.05B of operating cash flow, so the build-out is being funded with new debt and equity — the 10-K explicitly flags 'accessing debt and equity capital markets' as a strategic pillar, which points to future share issuance and interest-cost pressure.

The reason to own it is the growth story hiding inside a sleepy utility: the MD&A lays out ~$21.6B of planned capital investment through 2030 (including ~$9.3B of new, mostly natural-gas generation), and in February 2026 the company signed electric service agreements to serve data centers with ~1,900 MW of projected peak load, phasing in 2026-2028. For a regulated utility, approved capital spending is the earnings engine — rate base growth compounds EPS over years. Critically, the LLPS rate plans (approved by the KCC and MPSC in November 2025) include real safeguards: a minimum monthly bill set at 80% of expected capacity, 12-year terms, termination fees, and two years of collateral posted at signing — de-risking the demand and protecting existing ratepayers. Constructive regulatory outcomes are already landing: Kansas Central's $128M rate increase took effect October 2025, Metro has a ~$140M case pending for January 2027 rates, and Missouri SB4 now lets the utility earn on construction work-in-progress for new gas plants, shrinking the cash-flow drag of building.