Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Black Hills Corporation meeting. I will now turn the call over to Steve Mills. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I'm Steve Mills, Chairman of Black Hills Corporation's Board of Directors. I would like to welcome all of you to this live webcast of our annual shareholders meeting. This year, we are holding the meeting virtually in lieu of an in-person gathering to provide a convenient and secure way for our shareholders to participate from any location. Through this online platform, shareholders are able to view the meeting, submit questions, and vote, ensuring full participation while maintaining the high standards of transparency and governance expected of a publicly traded company. We very much appreciate your attendance.
In accordance with the notice of meeting, I call to order the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Black Hills Corporation. We will conduct this meeting in accordance with the agenda and the rules of conduct for this meeting, which will be found under the meeting materials section in the annual meeting portal. In fairness to all shareholders and to conduct an orderly meeting, we intend to adhere to these rules. After this meeting has been adjourned, we will provide time for general questions. Only validated shareholders of record may submit questions in the designated field on the annual meeting portal.
Before proceeding to the business portion of the meeting, I would first like to introduce the company's Board of Directors. Our company is very fortunate to have such a distinguished and broadly experienced group of directors, and their contributions are key to the company's ongoing success. The directors' biographies are included in our proxy statement.
In addition to myself, our current board members are Linn Evans, Barry Granger, Tony Jensen, Kathleen McAllister, Bob Otto, Scott Prochazka, and Teresa Taylor. We also have two retiring directors, Becky Roberts and Mark Schober. I would like to take this time to recognize Becky and Mark for their distinguished service to the board and to Black Hills Corporation. Becky has served on the board for 13 years and has chaired both our governance committee and our leadership development and compensation committee. Mark has been on the board for nine years and has served as the chair of our audit committee. Thank you, Becky and Mark, for your dedicated service.
We are also joined today by Bob Beard and Anne Waleski, two director nominees who are seeking election to our Board of Directors for the first time, and by Scott Loveless and Kristin Cargin with the firm of Deloitte & Touche, our independent public accounting firm.
Now on to today's business. Black Hills Corporation shareholders of record at the close of business on March 4th, 2025, were entitled to vote on matters coming before this meeting. I have an affidavit of mailing from Broadridge Financial Solutions certifying that all shareholders as of that date were mailed a notice of meeting, a proxy statement, a proxy, and the company's 2024 annual report to shareholders.
At the close of business on March 4th, 2025, the company had approximately 72.1 million shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote. A preliminary report by Broadridge on the number of shares represented at this meeting indicates we have more than the necessary 50% of the outstanding shares to constitute a quorum. On behalf of the Board of Directors and management, I would like to express my appreciation to all shareholders who have voted or returned their proxies.
All shareholders of the company eligible to vote at this meeting have been furnished a proxy statement dated March 14th, 2025. Three specific proposals are set forth in this proxy statement. Shareholders who desired to present additional proposals or director nominations at this annual meeting were required to provide notice to the company by January 23rd, 2025. The company did not receive any such notifications.
The three proposals set forth in the proxy are as follows. Proposal one is for the election of three directors: Robert F. Beard, Kathleen S. McAllister, and Robert P. Otto, to serve until the annual meeting in 2028, and for the election of one director, Anne G. Waleski, to serve until the annual meeting in 2026, and until their respective successors are duly elected and qualified. These individuals have been nominated for election as directors of the company based on the recommendation of the governance committee of the Board of Directors. The board's governance committee consists only of independent directors.
Our second proposal is to consider the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year 2025. While not required by law, the board submits this selection of Deloitte & Touche for ratification by the shareholders as a matter of good corporate governance.
Our third proposal is to receive an advisory vote on the executive compensation of our named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement. If there are any shareholders in attendance who have not previously voted or any shareholders who wish to change their vote, please do so at this time via the annual meeting portal.
Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I declare the polls for the 2025 annual shareholder meeting closed. Jim Raitt with American Election Services is our inspector of elections and has been tasked with tabulating the shareholder votes. Mr. Raitt informed me prior to the meeting that all three proposals have received more than the required number of votes to pass. Our final vote results will be reported on Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the next few days.
Our President and CEO, Linn Evans, will now give a brief presentation on the company's business. Following Linn's presentation, we will respond to any shareholder questions that have been submitted during this meeting. Linn?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for your interest in Black Hills Corporation and for joining our annual meeting today. Our success is possible because of your support. We're grateful for your trust in our ability to put your investment to work and growing long-term value.
To my coworkers listening in this morning, thank you for your continued dedication to our customers and our strategy, which is delivering results for all our stakeholders. Our greatest resources are our team and our culture. Thank you for living out our values every day within the more than 800 communities that we proudly and humbly serve. Together, in partnership with our stakeholders, we're delivering on our mission of improving life with energy, providing safe, reliable, and cost-effective energy that is essential to the lives and livelihoods of our customers and our communities.
Before I provide a review of 2024, I'll remind you that some of my comments today include forward-looking statements. Please review our risk factors on slide two of this presentation and our various filings with the SEC before making any investment decisions in Black Hills Corporation.
Slide three illustrates who we are today: an integrated utility with unique and balanced diversity. Our electric and natural gas businesses serve 1.35 million customers across eight stable and growing states. Our service territory and systems are extensive, providing a variety of unique opportunities to serve our growing customer base. Our electric utilities serve four states with 1.4 GW of generation capacity and more than 9,000 mi of transmission and distribution lines.
Our natural gas utilities serve five states with over 49,000 mi of gas lines. We also own and operate underground storage assets to support our natural gas sourcing strategies for our customers. These complementary utility businesses provide the benefits of diversity and a low-risk profile. We're a pure-play utility with 99% of our assets operating as regulated utilities or serving our regulated utilities under long-term contracts.
Moving to slide four. In early 2024, we laid out our key objectives for the year to deliver strong earnings, maintain a strong balance sheet, execute on our regulatory strategy, and advance our key growth initiatives. For the year, we delivered earnings per share of $3.91 in 2024, representing a 4.3% increase from the midpoint of our 2023 guidance. This achievement was driven by $0.82 per share in new rates, rider recovery, and customer growth, demonstrating the effectiveness of our regulatory strategy and operational efficiencies.
We successfully navigated industry challenges as we delivered on these objectives. We served our customers with industry-leading top- quartile electric reliability and improved our strong customer satisfaction scores. We achieved long-term net debt- to- capitalization target and reached constructive regulatory results, including implementing new rates in four of our six gas utilities. We advanced our customer-focused strategic initiatives to serve our customers and support ongoing growth led by increasing demand from our data center customers.
Last but certainly not least, we have completed 54 consecutive years of dividend increases in 2024, and we increased the dividend again this past January to mark 55 consecutive years of increases. You can see this dividend track record on the next slide. We have been rewarding our investors with a reliable dividend for 83 consecutive years, and we are very proud of this history.
On slide six, we lay out the success of strengthening our balance sheet. Our financial strength has allowed us to continue investing in critical infrastructure while maintaining a focus on cost management and customer affordability. Through strong operating cash flows and disciplined execution on our financing plan, we achieved our long-term net debt- to- capitalization ratio target of 55% and maintained our solid investment-grade credit ratings during the year.
Shifting gears to talk about business growth, slide seven displays overall residential customer growth being consistently strong, exceeding 1% in 2024 and on average over the last five years. Of note, the growth rates of customer count in the jurisdictions we serve are more than double the average population growth rate of those jurisdictions.
On the next slide, I will quickly cover our key customer-focused growth initiatives. In 2024, we made progress in developing and executing on our strategic opportunities. In Wyoming, we energized the first phase of our Ready Wyoming project, a 260 mi electric transmission line which will interconnect our South Dakota and our Wyoming electric systems. Once completed by the end of 2025, this project will reduce our dependence on third-party transmission services and provide long-term price stability for our customers. Importantly, a more interconnected and expanded electric system enhances system resiliency through increased energy market access, including renewables.
In 2024, we also advanced plans to add new resources to serve the growth and long-term energy needs of our customers and communities. We finalized plans for 99 MW of utility-owned dispatchable gas-fired generation to serve our South Dakota electric customers by mid-2026. In Colorado, we received approval for 350 MW of new renewable resources to comply with that state's emission requirements. This currently includes 100 MW of utility-owned solar, 50 MW of utility-owned battery resources, and a 200 MW solar power purchase agreement.
We also continue to serve demand from data centers, announcing planned service to Meta's new AI data center, beginning in 2026. We recently announced that we expect more than 1 GW of data center demand in the next 10 years from existing customers: Microsoft, whom we have been serving for over a decade, and Meta, starting to ramp up in 2026. By 2029, we expect to serve approximately 500 MW of that 1 GW pipeline. We also expect the EPS contribution from data centers to more than double to 10% or more of total EPS by 2028.
Slide nine addresses a key priority for us: managing and mitigating wildfire risk. We continue to work toward enhancing and expanding our wildfire mitigation plan through our three-layered approach of asset programs, integrity programs, and operational response. Alongside our local agencies, regulators, and stakeholders, we are focused on formalizing a public safety power shutoff program, or PSPS, by mid-year.
We're engaged with industry peers and legislators as we strongly supported new legislation in Wyoming addressing wildfire liability issues. House Bill 192 was signed into law in Wyoming last month, a win for both customers and utilities. We are also working toward the introduction of a similar bill in Colorado and South Dakota.
Slide 10 provides our financial outlook. With our focused execution on growth initiatives and strengthening our financial position, we remain confident in our long-term growth and creating value for our shareholders. Increased clarity around our growth opportunities gives us confidence that we can grow earnings by 4%-6% over the five-year plan period, with the upper end of this growth range expected to be achieved in the outer- years of the plan period. As I previously stated, this includes more than doubling the EPS contribution from our existing data center customers to 10% or more by 2028. We anticipate dividend growth to continue as we target a 55%-65% dividend payout ratio.
We also updated our capital forecast for the five-year period through 2029. With more clarity around some of our larger strategic initiatives, we included incremental capital investment for these and other new projects, increasing our five-year capital forecast to $4.7 billion.
I am very proud of our team's accomplishments in positioning the company for long-term growth and success. I am extremely encouraged by our team's dedication and commitment to our vision, mission, values, and our people and customer-focused strategy.
We have emerged from the unique challenges of 2024 stronger, and I'm excited about our opportunities ahead as we continue to improve life with energy for our customers, communities, and you, our shareholders. Thank you for your participation this morning, and thank you for your interest in Black Hills Corporation. I'll turn the meeting back to Chairman Mills.
Thanks, Linn. We will now open up the meeting for any questions or comments which shareholders have submitted. We will cap our question-and-answer period at 15 minutes. As I do not see any questions from our shareholders, I would now like to adjourn the meeting. Before I do so, I would like to thank everyone who was involved in preparing for and putting on this annual meeting. Lastly, thanks to everyone for attending the meeting today, and thank you for your continued interest in Black Hills Corporation. Stay safe and keep healthy.
This concludes today's meeting. You may now disconnect.