North American Utilities Weekly: Live from NY, it‘s the JPM Utilities & Power Conference!; Conference Preview & QBank; AI Capex 2.0; TerraPower Takeaways; News Flow; Comps; Utilities Lead

Research evidence excerpt

North American Utilities Weekly: Live from NY, it‘s the JPM Utilities & Power Conference!; Conference Preview & QBank; AI Capex 2.0; TerraPower Takeaways; News Flow; Comps; Utilities Lead

Jeremy Tonet, CFA AC North America Equity Research

(1-212) 622-4915 18 June 2026 J P M O R G A N

jeremy.b.tonet@jpmorgan.com

Feedback characterizes FE and EXC as facing higher degrees of risk in PA. While we

sense a muted response to Amazon’s MO data center (AEE), we point to plans to enter

service by 2027 as supporting the case for incremental sales growth beyond AEE’s PRP.

FERC’s interconnection ruling screens incrementally positive for the IPPs, with a focus

on speed. FERC’s order this morning effectively directs large loads to internalize

interconnection costs, establishing a contracting path forward as hyperscaler’s ‘pay

their fair share’, in our view, though we acknowledge uncertainty in grid connection

timing could drive volatility in outer year curves.

• AI Capex 2.0: If You Build It, They Will Finance It - Updated Growth Capital

Markets Forecasts. The financing wave is in full swing. Since we wrote in November,

total AI/Data Center–related issuance has exceeded $300 billion, with data center–

related debt issuance the single largest driver of near-record debt issuance to start the year.

While it’s been a strong start, we expect current issuance trends to represent a baseline

given the amount of financing set to hit markets in the coming years. Corporate credit

markets have dominated so far, but we expect issuers to tap every single capital market

to support their growth needs. Relative to our early expectations, issuers have surprised

a bit by globalizing their issuance, including large non-USD IG deals for hyperscaler and

debut euro HY issuance for data centers.