Alliant Energy reported third-quarter 2026 results after the market closed on October 29, and the headline numbers were strong enough on their own: net income of $398 million, up about 42% from $281 million a year earlier, and GAAP earnings per share of $1.52, up from $1.09 in the third quarter of 2025. Revenue rose about 6% to $1.29 billion. But the number that matters most for the investment thesis was not in the quarter at all. It was in the outlook: a four-year capital expenditure forecast of $15.9 billion for 2027 through 2030, up 19% from the prior plan, built to serve data-center load that Alliant says is already contracted.
For a utility of Alliant’s size — a Madison, Wisconsin-based company whose two regulated utilities, Interstate Power and Light (IPL) in Iowa and Wisconsin Power and Light (WPL) in Wisconsin, serve a combined territory far smaller than the coastal giants — a $15.9 billion plan is a statement of intent. It says management believes the load growth reshaping the sector is a Midwest phenomenon too, and that it intends to capture it in rate base rather than watch it pass by. The question for investors is the one that applies to every utility capital plan: how much of this spending is grounded in signed, paying load, and how much rests on forecasts that still have to come true?
Start with operating EPS, as always
Read the earnings report the way the explainer in this publication teaches: operating EPS first, then the reconciliation. In Alliant’s case the distinction barely mattered this quarter. GAAP EPS and ongoing EPS were both $1.52, against $1.12 on an ongoing basis a year earlier, because the prior-year quarter carried a $0.03-per-share charge tied to remeasuring deferred tax assets. For the first nine months of 2026, GAAP EPS was $3.04, up 17% from $2.59, while ongoing EPS was $2.99, up 14% from $2.62. The nine-month ongoing figure excludes a $0.05-per-share benefit from the same deferred-tax remeasurement item. In other words, this was not a quarter manufactured by adjustments. The growth was in the regulated business.
The drivers, as Alliant disclosed them, read like a textbook illustration of the rate base mechanism. Higher revenue requirements from expanding rate base added an estimated $0.05 per share at IPL and $0.12 per share at WPL, reflecting investments in generation and energy storage already placed in service. Higher allowance for funds used during construction contributed as well, along with higher equity earnings from corporate venture investments and stronger retail electric sales.
One driver deserves a discount, and Alliant flagged it itself. Timing of income tax expense helped the quarter’s ongoing results, but the company said that timing variance will reverse by year-end. Weather helped too, adding an estimated $0.05 per share from temperature-driven retail sales against $0.03 a year earlier. Strip out the tax timing and the weather, and the quarter still shows a regulated business growing through rate base — but the underlying growth rate is more modest than the 42% net income headline suggests. That is not a criticism; it is how utility earnings reports are supposed to be read.
Guidance: narrowed, then raised into 2027
Guidance is the promise that matters most, and Alliant used this report to tighten it and extend it. Full-year 2026 ongoing EPS guidance was narrowed to $3.41–$3.46 per share, the top half of the original $3.36–$3.46 range — a narrowing upward, which is the credible kind. More consequentially, the company introduced 2027 ongoing EPS guidance of $3.63–$3.73 per share, roughly 8% growth at the midpoint against the midpoint of the original 2026 range. It also raised its 2027 annual common stock dividend target to $2.25 per share from the current $2.14 target, subject to quarterly board approval.
Notice what that guidance package implies. A utility guiding 8% EPS growth into 2027 while simultaneously raising its four-year capital plan by nearly a fifth is telling the market that the spending will convert into earnings on schedule — that projects enter service, enter rate base, and earn their authorized returns without long regulatory lag. That is a testable claim, and the test arrives in rate cases and commission orders over the next four years, not in press releases.
The capital plan, in numbers
The plan itself is worth reading by category, because the mix reveals where management sees durable regulatory support and where it is making its biggest bets. Alliant’s projected capital expenditures, which exclude allowance for funds used during construction and capitalized interest, total $4.305 billion in 2027, peak at $4.735 billion in 2028, moderate to $4.285 billion in 2029, and then fall sharply to $2.610 billion in 2030. The four-year total is $15.9 billion. Compare that cadence with the prior plan, which had put 2027 spending at about $3.58 billion and 2028 at about $3.63 billion: the step-up is not gradual. It is a near-doubling of the annual run rate from the roughly $2.86 billion expected in 2026, sustained for three years, then a cliff.
The category split for 2027 through 2030 is roughly $6.8 billion for thermal generation and liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, $5.1 billion for renewables and energy storage, about $2.3 billion for electric distribution systems, about $0.6 billion for gas distribution, and about $1.1 billion for other spending. Two observations follow. First, this is not a renewables-led plan with gas as an afterthought; thermal and LNG is the single largest bucket, at about 43% of the total. Second, the plan concentrates execution risk in 2027 and 2028, when thermal and LNG spending runs above $1.85 billion a year and renewables and storage peak at $1.89 billion in 2028. If projects slip, they slip together.
What the money buys
The thermal and LNG bucket is the plan’s reliability anchor, and its size tells you something important about how Alliant’s planners view the load they are about to serve. Data centers do not tolerate intermittency; they need firm capacity around the clock, and in a Midwestern system that still means dispatchable generation and fuel infrastructure. LNG storage and gas lateral investments let the utility hold fuel on hand and deliver it when pipelines are constrained, which is precisely the kind of unglamorous resilience spending that never makes a press release headline but determines whether the lights stay on during a January cold snap. The risk in this bucket is political as much as technical: a large gas build in an era of contested decarbonization policy can draw opposition in commission proceedings, and the longer the approval process runs, the more the 2027–2028 schedule compresses.
The renewables and storage bucket, at $5.1 billion, is nearly as large, and its shape is telling. Spending rises from $1.25 billion in 2027 to $1.89 billion in 2028, holds at $1.65 billion in 2029, then falls to $335 million in 2030. That pattern suggests a defined wave of projects rather than a steady-state program. An investor reading this plan should ask, project by project, which of these resources have received commission approval and which are still awaiting it, because approved spending and proposed spending are not the same thing.
Distribution spending, at roughly $2.9 billion across electric and gas systems, is the quietest and arguably the most certain part of the plan. New large loads need substations, feeders, and system upgrades before a single megawatt of new generation matters, and distribution investment in a constructive jurisdiction is typically high-confidence spending with a well-understood recovery path. It is also the spending most directly tied to serving all customers, not just data centers — a distinction that matters when commissions weigh who benefits and who pays.
The load assumption: contracted is not delivered
Everything in the plan hangs on the load forecast, and Alliant’s headline figures are striking. IPL and WPL together hold 3.4 gigawatts of contracted demand from data centers, and the company expects peak demand across its service territories to rise approximately 60% by 2031. Both the contracted base and the growth expectation have moved up from the prior plan. A 60% peak-demand increase in five years would be extraordinary for any utility, let alone one whose territories historically grew slowly. If it materializes, the capital plan is arguably conservative. If it does not, the plan is exposed.
Here is where the IRP red-flags checklist earns its keep. Contracted demand is stronger evidence than speculative pipeline, and Alliant deserves credit for anchoring its plan to signed agreements rather than inquiries. But a contract is not a metered load. Data centers ramp in phases, construction timelines slip, and customers sometimes renegotiate or delay. The relevant questions are ones the earnings release does not fully answer: what are the ramp schedules behind the 3.4 gigawatts, what take-or-pay or minimum-demand provisions protect the utility if a customer is slow to arrive, and how much of the $15.9 billion is committed to projects that proceed regardless of ramp timing versus projects that can be deferred if load is late? A plan that can flex with load is resilient; a plan that must be built on faith is not. Watch the next investor presentation and the utilities’ resource plans for those answers.
The cost-allocation question is equally important and will be fought in commission rooms, not on earnings calls. When a utility builds $15.9 billion of infrastructure substantially motivated by a handful of very large customers, regulators must decide how much of the cost those customers bear through dedicated rates or contributions, and how much falls into the general rate base paid by all customers. Alliant’s extension of IPL’s retail electric base rate stability plan through 2030, while seeking to earn its authorized return on equity, is part of this bargain: rate predictability for Iowa customers in exchange for a framework that lets the utility recover its investment. Stability plans are valuable precisely because they reduce regulatory lag, but they also lock in assumptions about load and cost that will be tested if either disappoints.
The funding question the release leaves open
Every capital plan has a funding plan, and this one will test Alliant’s balance sheet more than any plan in its recent history. Annual spending of $4.3 billion to $4.7 billion in 2027 and 2028 is roughly one and a half times the 2026 level, sustained over multiple years. The earnings release’s headline guidance does not, by itself, explain how that spending is funded — how much from operating cash flow, how much from debt, and how much from new equity. That mix determines both dilution for existing shareholders and pressure on the credit metrics rating agencies watch, above all funds from operations to debt.
This is the place to apply the balance-sheet discipline from the utility investing canon: telegraphed, measured equity issuance is a normal cost of growth; surprise issuance is a signal that management lost control of the funding plan. Alliant’s dividend target increase to $2.25 suggests management believes it can fund growth and grow the payout together, but the dividend and the capital plan compete for the same cash flow.
What to watch
Four things will determine whether this plan becomes earnings or becomes a cautionary tale. First, ramp: do the contracted data centers energize on the schedules embedded in the load forecast, and does metered peak demand track the path toward 60% growth by 2031? Second, approvals: do the Iowa and Wisconsin commissions approve the generation, LNG, and transmission investments on timelines consistent with the 2027–2028 spending peak, and on cost-recovery terms that let Alliant earn its authorized return? Third, execution: can the company deliver a wave of thermal, renewables, and storage projects simultaneously without the cost overruns that have plagued large utility builds elsewhere? Fourth, funding: does the company lay out a credible, telegraphed financing plan — and stick to it — as spending peaks?
The 2030 spending cliff is its own signal. A plan that falls from $4.285 billion in 2029 to $2.610 billion in 2030 is either a plan whose major projects are genuinely complete, or one whose later years have not yet been filled in. The next capital plan update will show whether Alliant extends the wave or lets it break.
The one-line summary
Alliant’s third quarter was genuinely strong, but quarters fade and capital plans compound. The $15.9 billion plan is a bet that 3.4 gigawatts of contracted data-center demand will become real, metered, paying load on schedule — and that two state commissions will let the utility earn its authorized return on the infrastructure built to serve it. If both halves of that bet pay off, the rate base math does the rest: capex today becomes earnings tomorrow. If either half falters, the same math works in reverse. For now, the contracted load gives this plan a firmer footing than most load-growth stories in the sector. The next four years will show whether footing was enough. This is analysis, not investment advice; the numbers that matter next are ramp rates, commission orders, and the funding plan, in that order.