Evergy’s third-quarter 2026 results, reported November 5, contain two different stories. The first is a very good three months: GAAP earnings of $612.9 million, or $2.59 per share, against $475.0 million, or $2.03 per share, a year earlier, with adjusted earnings of $609.9 million, or $2.58 per share, against $475.1 million, or $2.03. The second is a load-growth pipeline turning from prospecting into paperwork. The first story will not repeat itself next quarter. The second one might.
Start with the weather, because Evergy’s own accounting invites it. Chief financial officer Bryan Buckler put the combined contribution of weather, demand, and large-customer revenues at $0.46 per share of the year-over-year increase. Cooling degree days ran 31 percent above the third quarter of 2025 and 26 percent above normal. Recovery of regulated investments added $0.17, higher operations and maintenance, depreciation, and interest took back $0.15, and other items added $0.07. The arithmetic lands exactly on $2.58, and it is the reason the headline number should not be read as the new normal.
The durable part of the $0.46 is the demand inside it. Weather-normalized retail demand rose 4.5 percent in the quarter, which Buckler described as well above what Evergy has experienced in recent years and evidence of a step change in demand growth. Commercial demand rose 8.7 percent, driven by data center usage; industrial demand rose 3 percent, driven primarily by Panasonic’s continued ramp; residential demand rose 0.8 percent. Through September, weather-normalized demand is up 3.7 percent, tracking the company’s full-year expectation of 3 to 4 percent.
That distinction matters for the guidance raise that followed. Evergy lifted full-year 2026 adjusted earnings guidance to $4.35 to $4.50 per share, from $4.14 to $4.34, and reaffirmed its long-term target of 6 to 8 percent-plus annual adjusted earnings growth through 2030, measured from the original 2026 guidance midpoint of $4.24, with growth expected to exceed 8 percent annually beginning in 2028. Year-to-date adjusted earnings of $4.15 per share, against $3.41 a year ago, already put the company most of the way there. The board also raised the quarterly dividend 4 percent, to $0.7225 per share, payable December 18, 2026 to shareholders of record November 20, an annualized $2.89 per share.
The signed load: three amendments, about 250 MW
The load news is more concrete than the earnings news, and it comes in two tiers that should not be conflated. The first tier is signed. During the quarter Evergy worked with two large customers to refine their anticipated load profiles and update their electric service agreements, announcing three amendments expected to add approximately 250 megawatts of incremental peak load over the 2027–2030 period and beyond. Two amendments, across two existing agreements, add about 110 megawatts. A third, for a roughly 140-megawatt expansion of an existing project, is contingent on a transmission study expected by the end of 2026.
Read that breakdown carefully, because it is the difference between load that is contracted and load that is conditional. The 110 megawatts is an amendment to agreements already in force. The 140 megawatts depends on what a transmission study finds. Together, the amendments lift Evergy’s five executed electric service agreements to approximately 2.6 gigawatts of steady-state peak load, from about 2.5 gigawatts, and with non-Large Load Power Service customers included, the projects are expected to require approximately 3.1 gigawatts of peak load over time.
The ramp behind those totals is the number to hold in mind. Aggregate demand from signed large customers is expected to build from approximately 350 to 400 megawatts today to about 2,250 megawatts in 2030, expanding to 3,100 megawatts after 2030 — a sixfold increase in five years on the contracted book alone. It is anchored by long-term contracts: the five agreements operate under the Large Load Power Service tariff, or LLPS, with premium demand rates, binding minimum bills, and credit and collateral protections, on terms generally spanning 15 to 17 years. The minimum bill is the load-bearing provision — a customer that signs for capacity pays for it whether or not it uses every megawatt, which is what lets a utility finance generation for a customer that does not yet exist at full scale.
The headline: a 1.4 GW letter of intent with Digital Realty
The second tier is the headline, and it is deliberately not yet in the first tier. Evergy signed a letter of intent with Digital Realty for a 1.4-gigawatt expansion adjacent to the customer’s existing 600-megawatt project, which carries a signed electric service agreement announced on Evergy’s first-quarter earnings call. Together, the two projects represent 2 gigawatts of load with a single customer. Evergy expects to execute an electric service agreement for the expansion in the first half of 2027. The expansion is not included in Evergy’s five-year financial plan, and neither is the contingent 140-megawatt amendment.
The site is part of the story. It is the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, a remediated industrial site of more than 9,000 acres — chairman and chief executive David Campbell noted on the call that it is almost 60 percent the size of Manhattan — that Campbell described as well suited to this type of development. A site of that scale, already remediated and already industrial, sidesteps the land assembly and community opposition that stall greenfield campuses elsewhere. Campbell said Evergy is prioritizing large-customer projects in areas well suited to these developments and backed by local permits and local support, and Sunflower is his example of what that filter produces.
The capital behind it deserves a slow read. For the Digital Realty expansion alone, Evergy anticipates capital investments could be in the neighborhood of $4 billion, and Buckler said the company expects to own the vast majority of the generation resources needed to serve the load — a utility-owned generation build, not a customer-built microgrid or a third-party tolling arrangement. It sits outside the current $21.6 billion five-year capital plan, which Evergy said could rise to $22.5 billion with about $1 billion of incremental investment from its 2026 integrated resource plan preferred plans, lifting projected rate-base growth through 2030 to approximately 12 percent from 11.5 percent. The $4 billion would be additive to a plan that is already elevated, and the company will update the capital plan on its fourth-quarter call in February.
What an LOI actually is
A letter of intent is a statement of alignment, not a contract, and Evergy’s own language keeps that distinction visible. Campbell said the LOI “demonstrates alignment on commercial terms and a shared interest in investing in Kansas,” and the company’s pipeline slides place the 1.4 gigawatts in a category of Tier 1 expansion opportunities — 2.0 to 2.5 gigawatts at or adjacent to existing customer sites — that will require amending load ramps and existing agreements or signing new ones. The five-year plan, Buckler emphasized, “does not yet incorporate any impact from these potential expansion projects.”
The definitive agreement, the transmission and generation solutions, and the Kansas tariff decision are the conversion points to watch.
The tariff underneath the deals
Every agreement in this story runs through the Large Load Power Service tariff, and Evergy spent as much of the call on the tariff as on the deals. The LLPS, in Campbell’s description, protects existing customers by ensuring large customers pay the full costs associated with serving them and their fair share of incremental system costs, while delivering affordability benefits back to other retail customers under commission oversight. The mechanism is the familiar one from our earlier coverage of large-load planning: premium demand rates, binding minimum bills, and credit and collateral requirements, so the customer causing the investment funds it.
On October 29, Evergy asked the Kansas Corporation Commission to approve an enhancement: the LLPS Customer Affordability Enhancement Plan, a new vintage of the tariff that adds a vintage cost rider to accommodate the higher costs of new generation resources, as well as non-refundable advance payments from customers. Evergy anticipates an order by mid-2027. The logic is straightforward: as the generation needed to serve new load gets more expensive, the tariff has to collect more of that cost from the new load up front.
The Missouri side of the docket moved at the same time. Evergy reached a partial revenue-requirements settlement in its Missouri Metro rate review in October, with return on capital left open for commission evaluation. If the settlement is approved and the midpoint of staff testimony on return on capital is used — a 9.7 percent return on equity with a 52 percent equity ratio — the revenue increase would be approximately $118 million before the impact of new large load. A related LLPS stipulation would deliver approximately $60 million of net benefits from new large-customer revenues, for a total net revenue increase of approximately $58 million, with earnings above a specified level shared 65/35 between customers and shareholders. A commission order is expected in December, with new rates in January 2027.
The affordability argument, and its test
Underneath the tariff mechanics is the affordability claim Evergy makes for the whole strategy, and the company put numbers on it this quarter. Since 2017, Campbell said, the cumulative change in Evergy’s all-in rates is approximately 7 percent, compared with a regional peer average of 25 percent and overall inflation of 33 percent. The Missouri Metro settlement, on Evergy’s telling, would deliver about $6 million annually to the benefit of existing residential and industrial customers. The claim is plausible in structure and unproven in duration: spreading fixed costs across more kilowatt-hours lowers average cost only if the new load actually arrives and pays the premium rates and minimum bills the tariff contemplates.
That is why the contract terms matter more than the press-release totals: a 15- to 17-year agreement with a binding minimum bill is a revenue stream a utility can finance against, while a letter of intent is not. The test of the affordability argument will be the next rate cases, when the $4 billion of generation for a single customer starts entering rate base and the minimum bills either cover it or do not.
Kansas and Missouri as a named growth market
Step back from the quarter, and the geography is the news. Evergy now forecasts retail demand growth of approximately 7 to 8 percent annually through 2030, based on signed agreements and announced large customers expected to reach a steady state of 3.1 gigawatts. Campbell said the company has a high level of confidence in achieving a total of 5 to 7 gigawatts of large-load customer agreements, driving growth well into the 2030s. Beyond the Tier 1 expansions sits a Tier 2 category of approximately 1 to 2 gigawatts in advanced discussions with new customers, and a remaining pipeline of well over 10 additional gigawatts.
That is a different posture from a year ago, when Kansas and Missouri were a plausible but unproven market for hyperscale load. The difference is not the size of the queue — every utility has a queue — but the conversion rate: five executed agreements, three amendments in a single quarter, and a named customer expanding from 600 megawatts to a potential 2 gigawatts at a single remediated site. The comparison with DTE’s Michigan template, which we covered in October, is instructive: DTE’s deals sit inside the regulated model with commission-approved special contracts, 80 percent minimum billing demands, and customer-funded storage. Evergy’s LLPS framework rhymes — premium rates, binding minimums, collateral, and commission oversight.
There are reasons to keep the enthusiasm measured. Generation reliability outperformed through a demanding summer, Campbell said, with record peak demand for both Evergy and the Southwest Power Pool — a genuine achievement, and a reminder that the system has already been tested at its limits before most of this load arrives. The load is contracted faster than the generation to serve it is approved, which is the normal condition of this market and also its central risk.
What to watch
The milestones, in order: the transmission study for the contingent 140-megawatt amendment, expected by the end of 2026; the Missouri Metro commission order in December and new rates in January 2027; the updated capital plan on the fourth-quarter call in February; the Kansas decision on the LLPS enhancement plan, expected by mid-2027; and the definitive electric service agreement with Digital Realty, expected in the first half of 2027.
The bottom line
Evergy’s third quarter was a strong quarter built partly on weather that will not repeat, and a load-growth story built on contracts that, for the most part, will. The $0.46 per share from weather, demand, and large-customer revenues includes a hot summer that added 31 percent more cooling degree days than a year ago; the 4.5 percent weather-normalized demand growth underneath it is the durable part, concentrated in commercial load driven by data centers. The signed book stands at five agreements worth about 2.6 gigawatts, 3.1 gigawatts with non-LLPS customers, ramping from 350 to 400 megawatts today toward 2,250 megawatts in 2030. The Digital Realty letter of intent would add 1.4 gigawatts at a single remediated site in Kansas — if it converts to an agreement in the first half of 2027.