Alliant Energy Raises the Data-Center Bar—and the Financing Bill

A 19% bigger capex plan and 8%-plus EPS growth are real, but a slower dividend raise and 1.3x interest coverage tell the market what the growth costs.

LNT · Earnings Call · 2026-10-30

The load story got bigger; the financing story got louder

Alliant Energy's third-quarter call was not a routine utility update. The company raised its 2027-2030 capital plan to $15.9 billion, 19% above last year's four-year plan, initiated 2027 EPS guidance of $3.63-$3.73, and extended its 8%-plus earnings growth outlook through 2030. “Our refreshed capital investment plan through 2030 is 19% higher than last year's plan.” — Lisa Barton, President and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-10-30 That is a real acceleration for a regulated utility with an $18.6 billion market cap. Yet the stock is down 6% over the last 90 days and 8.2% from its July 2 peak, according to the tape. The market is not debating whether Alliant can find data-center load. It is debating what that load costs to serve. The company's own language has shifted from "pipeline" to "planning period" and "dependable growth." planning period is now the top company keyword, alongside incremental CapEx and base rate stability. That is the tell: this quarter is about converting ambition into an executable capital program, not about announcing the largest number. On the July call, CFO Robert Durian promised “we'll update our 4- to 5-year capital expenditure plan, and that will really drive kind of our confidence level with how we might be able to change the EPS CAGR going forward.” — Robert Durian, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer · 2026-07-31 This quarter delivered that update—and with it, a more complicated funding question.

Raising the bar on large load

Management spent most of the prepared remarks on data centers, but the interesting move is how it is framing them. Five data centers support expectations for greater than 60% contracted demand growth by 2031; three are under construction. Google is taking transmission service in Iowa with an accelerated ramp, QTS expects to commission its first two Cedar Rapids buildings later this quarter, and Meta is taking distribution service in Wisconsin with transmission service expected in Q1 2027. The company has three sites totaling 3.4 gigawatts of committed data-center load and expects roughly one additional gigawatt of contracted large load within six months. “A signed electric service agreement remains important, but we also require clear visibility into land, transmission, generation.” — Lisa Barton, President and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-10-30 Lisa Barton added that local permitting is now part of the higher bar. That is a subtle but important contrast with prior calls, where the 2-4 gigawatt pipeline was described as mature and high-confidence. The bar has gone up, not down. load growth is still the growth engine, but the company is trying to sell quality of load rather than quantity. The word large load now carries a stricter definition than it did a year ago. The new wrinkle is Mesabi Metallics, a mining project in Lee County, Iowa. It is not a data center, and Barton said “a significant portion of its load is anticipated to be curtailable.” — Lisa Barton, President and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-10-30 That introduces a different kind of non curtailable capacity planning: Alliant will build only for Mesabi's firm needs, with future phases requiring more resources. Mesabi is a company-unique keyword and a useful reminder that the data-center boom is not the only demand driver in Iowa. The market has spent a year pricing hyperscaler load; a large industrial load with curtailment is a different risk profile.

Our objective is not to present the biggest number, but to provide investors with the greatest confidence in the executability of our growth.
Lisa Barton, President and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-10-30

That is a good line. It is also a pre-emptive defense. The analyst questions were not about whether the sites exist; they were about base years, the "plus" in 8%-plus, and how much equity the plan requires.

The dividend is the tell

The most consequential sentence on the call may have been about the dividend. Robert Durian said Alliant is “moderating the pace of dividend growth to help fund our larger capital plan efficiently.” — Robert Durian, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer · 2026-10-30 The 2027 dividend target is $2.25 per share, a 5% increase, while EPS growth is guided to 8%-plus. For a utility that has historically sold income plus growth, that gap matters. It signals that the marginal dollar of cash flow is going into the capital plan, not the dividend. The funding stack is more creative than it was a year ago. Alliant closed a $5.1 billion DOE guaranteed loan program, with up to $1.2 billion of cumulative customer savings versus traditional debt; it expects roughly $2 billion of tax credits over the planning period; and it has secured about $1.1 billion of the $2.7 billion of common equity in the updated plan through forward agreements. The Department of Energy financing and financing strategy are genuinely new pillars of the story. They lower the cost of the build and support the affordability argument. Durian also gave a simple rule of thumb for the incremental build: “for every gigawatt of additional load, you're probably going to see somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion to $3 billion of additional CapEx.” — Robert Durian, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer · 2026-10-30 But the balance sheet is doing more work than the income statement. Non-current debt stood at $10.6 billion, up 10% year over year and up 342% over 15 years. Interest coverage is just 1.3x, down 28% year over year and down 65% over three years. Capital expenditure was $571 million in the latest filed quarter. Against $971 million of revenue, that is a capex intensity of roughly 59%. The plan is financeable, but it is not self-funding. The equity bridge also remains a live debate. On the prior call, Durian said “as you think about incremental CapEx, we would expect to fund roughly 40% to 50% of that with new common equity.” — Robert J. Durian, Executive Vice President and CFO · 2025-08-08 This quarter, equity is at the low end of that range, about 40% of incremental capex. Management argues future incremental capex could need less common equity as data-center cash flows ramp. That may prove right, but it is a promise about 2030 cash flow, not a current balance-sheet fact. The market is being asked to underwrite both the load ramp and the financing mix.

Why the stock is not celebrating

The tape is the contrast. Alliant's full-history return is still +361%, but the recent 90-day line is a steady 6% decline into the report. Meanwhile, the global tape shows the data-center complex cooling: AI data center is a 90-day decliner, as are data-center capacity, data-center power, and high-performance compute themes. The market's top global keywords for the latest quarter include impact of high rates and Fed rate hikes. A regulated utility with 1.3x interest coverage and a larger equity-funded capex plan is exactly the kind of name that gets pressured when rates and financing risk are back on the screen. This is not a broken story. The load is real, the regulatory construct in Iowa is constructive, and the 1-year extension of IPL's retail electric base rate stability plan through 2030 is a genuine affordability win. The company also has a credible 8%-plus EPS growth runway through 2030 and a 13% rate-base-plus-CWIP CAGR. But the call marks a transition: Alliant is no longer just a data-center beneficiary; it is a data-center financier. The next catalysts are concrete: whether the additional gigawatt lands by the AGA conference, whether Mesabi's size is disclosed, whether the DOE loan funds as planned, and whether interest coverage stabilizes as capex ramps. Until then, "dependable growth" has a financing asterisk, and the stock is voting on the asterisk.