4/10 · Low-Moderate — ~8% forward EPS CAGR; data-center load (3.4 GW contracted) is a genuine accelerant, but the regulated model caps the ceiling
Technicals
Uptrend but overbought — $78.03 at the 52-wk high, above 50/200-DMA, RSI 76, +27% 12-mo (SPY +21%)
Conviction
Low — 0 expert voices in KB; verdict rests on fundamentals + quant, not conviction breadth
Position sizing
Income/defensive sleeve only, ~1–2% if at all; wait for a pullback
Next catalyst
2026-08-06 Q2'26 earnings (Street EPS $0.70)
Single biggest risk
Rising rates / regulatory disallowance on a ~$12B net-debt, capex-heavy balance sheet
One-line thesis. Alliant is a well-run Midwest regulated electric-and-gas utility riding a real data-center demand wave (3.4 GW of contracted load, five executed agreements) that supports its decade-plus ~6% EPS growth track record — but at ~23× forward earnings, near a 52-week high, on 5.7× net-debt/EBITDA leverage, the stock already prices that in. Own it for the ~2.7% dividend and rate-base compounding, not for upside; Watch until a better entry.
◆ Synthos call — HoldLNT is a solid business largely reflected at ~$79 — fine to keep, no reason to chase; it gets interesting again below ~$67.
Downside Risk (lower = safer)
5/10 · Moderate
Low beta (0.55) & regulated cash flows, but 5.7× net-debt/EBITDA leverage and 22× forward P/E for ~8% growth.
Growth Quality
5/10 · Moderate
~6-8% EPS CAGR, rising rate base, single-digit ROE ~11%; steady but not high-quality compounding.
Exponential Potential
4/10 · Moderate
Data-center demand (3.4 GW contracted) is a real accelerant, but a regulated utility caps the multiple and the upside.
⚖ Reverse-DCF cross-checkMarket-implied growth ≈ 11%/yrTo justify today’s $78, earnings would have to compound roughly 11% a year for 10 years (9% discount rate). Analysts forecast ~10%/yr, so the market is pricing in about what the Street expects.What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)
Buy — CoreOwn it as a foundation — start or add now, size it for years, let dips be gifts.
Buy — TacticalGood price + confirmed trend + a defined exit — buy the setup, not a marriage.
WatchWe want the business, just not at this price/setup — act only when the listed trigger hits.
HoldFine to keep if you own it — no reason to buy more; new money does better elsewhere.
AvoidDon't own it — the problem is the business or the expectations, so a cheaper price won't fix it.
In plain English
Alliant Energy is a power and gas company for about a million homes and businesses in Iowa and Wisconsin. It is a regulated monopoly: state regulators let it earn a set, fairly predictable profit on the poles, wires, and power plants it builds. That makes the earnings steady and the dividend (~2.7% a year) reliable — this is a "sleep-well" utility, not a rocket ship.
Right now the stock is priced about right, maybe a touch expensive. You're paying roughly $23 for every $1 of next year's earnings, which is on the high side for a utility that grows earnings only about 6-8% a year. It just hit a 52-week high, so you'd be buying at the top of its recent range. Our verdict is Watch — a fine business, but wait for a cheaper price.
Here's what our three scores mean in everyday terms:
Downside Risk 5/10 (middle of the road). The business barely swings with the economy and pays a steady dividend, but it carries a lot of debt (about $12 billion) and pays a full price today, so there's little cushion.
Exponential Potential 4/10 (low). The new data-center customers are a genuine tailwind, but a regulated utility can only grow so fast — don't expect it to double quickly.
The one big worry: Alliant borrows heavily to build power plants and grid. If interest rates rise or regulators refuse to let it recover its costs, both earnings and the dividend get squeezed.
Solid = price · dashed = 50-day average · dotted = 200-day average · amber = 52-week high/low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.
Bollinger Bands 20-day average ± 2 standard deviations
The shaded band widens when the stock gets more volatile. Riding the upper edge = strong momentum (sometimes stretched); the lower edge = weak / potentially oversold.
Blue crossing above amber (bars flip green) = momentum turning up; below (bars red) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.
Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLU (sector)), set to 100 a year ago
Solid = LNT · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLU (sector). A rising line means it is beating that benchmark — the sector line shows whether it is a leader or laggard within its own group.
Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.
Key stats an RIA wants
Price$78.03
Market cap$20B
P/E trailing3×
P/E FY26E / FY27E23× / 21×
EV / Sales7.2×
EV / EBITDA15.5×
Gross margin38.0%
Net margin18.6%
Dividend yield2.67%
Beta0.552
52-wk range$61 – $78
RSI(14)76
50 / 200-DMA$73 / $69
12-mo return+27% (SPY +21%)
Street target$76 ($74–$81)
Analyst grades12 Buy · 11 Hold · 0 Sell
FMP ratingB-
Next earnings2026-08-05
What the experts actually said 0 traceable claims on LNT · showing the highest-conviction voices
Every claim reconciles to a real claim_id in the Synthos knowledge base — this is the evidence the verdict is built on, not vibes. Management (the company itself) is shown but half-weighted; one cautionary voice is included on purpose.
1. What it is
Alliant Energy (NASDAQ: LNT) is a Madison, Wisconsin-based utility holding company serving ~1,010,000 electric and ~435,000 natural-gas customers across Iowa and Wisconsin through two regulated subsidiaries: Interstate Power and Light (IPL, Iowa) and Wisconsin Power and Light (WPL, Wisconsin). It also owns small non-utility assets (a short-line railroad, a Mississippi River freight terminal, a gas peaker and a wind farm). Fiscal year ends December 31. CEO Lisa Barton; ~3,000 employees.
Revenue mix (FY2025, from filings):
By product/segment: Electric $3.70B (85%) · Gas $525M (12%) · Other Utility $51M (1%). Overwhelmingly a regulated electric business.
By geography: US-only (Iowa + Wisconsin). FMP provides no geographic split — this is a domestic Midwest utility with no international exposure.
The strategic story is electric rate-base growth driven by data-center load: management reports ~3.4 GW of contracted data-center demand across five executed electric-service agreements, including a new ~370 MW Iowa agreement signed in Q1'26. That demand is what turns a low-single-digit-growth utility into a ~6%+ EPS grower.
2. The expert thesis — why the panel is (not) covering it (traceable)
There is no expert coverage of LNT in the Synthos knowledge base: total_claims = 0, net-bullish voices = 0. No distilled analyst, podcast, or investor claim references this name. That is normal for a mid-cap regulated utility — it is not the kind of asymmetric, narrative-driven stock the expert panel tends to discuss.
What this means for the verdict: this call is entirely fundamentals- and quant-driven. There is no conviction breadth to lean on, so we do not claim any. Every number below is either a reported figure (FMP filings), an analyst consensus estimate (labeled as such), or our own scenario model. We fabricate no conviction and cite no claim_ids because none exist.
3. Synthos scores & the Bull / Base / Bear cases
The one-glance judgment — three scores, 0–10, each anchored to real metrics (not probabilities we can't honestly calibrate):
Score
0–10
The read
Downside Risk(lower = safer)
5 · Moderate
Beta 0.55 and regulated, recession-resistant cash flows are genuinely defensive, but 5.7× net-debt/EBITDA, a current ratio of 0.69, and ~23× forward earnings at a 52-wk high leave little cushion if rates rise or a rate case disappoints.
Growth Quality
5 · Average
~6-8% forward EPS CAGR on a rising rate base, ROE ~11%, but ROIC only ~4.3% and structurally negative free cash flow (capex > operating cash flow). Steady, not high-quality.
Exponential Potential
4 · Low-Moderate
Data-center load (3.4 GW contracted) is a real, accelerating demand driver — rare for a utility — but the regulated model and a $20B cap keep this a compounder, not a multibagger.
The three cases (our own scenario model — assumptions shown; each target is a ~12–18-month fair value). We deliberately do not attach probabilities: the base case is the expected path, so a weighted blend would just restate it with false precision. The cases bound the range; the scores above summarize them.
Case
Key assumptions
Fair value
Bull
Data-center demand converts faster than planned; constructive rate outcomes; EPS beats to ~$3.85 (FY27) and the market pays a premium ~24× for the growth acceleration.
~$92 (+18%)
Base(our anchor)
Guidance holds — FY27E EPS ~$3.68, ~6-7% EPS growth continues; a fair regulated-utility multiple of ~21.5×.
~$79 (+1%)
Bear
Rising rates lift the discount on a leveraged utility; a rate-case disallowance or data-center slippage; EPS ~$3.50 (FY27) on a de-rated ~18×.
~$63 (−19%)
Synthos fair value = the base case, ~$79 (+1%), with the full $63–$92 span as the honest range. This anchor sits slightly above the Street's $76.2 consensus but implies essentially no margin of safety at $78. This is a tracked call — the Forecaster Scorecard grades it once it matures.
4. Exponential Potential
Synthos separates compounders (durable, steady returns) from exponentials (accelerating multi-baggers-from-here). LNT is a modest compounder with one genuinely interesting accelerant:
Forward growth: revenue CAGR FY25→FY30E ~4.7% ($4.36B → $5.48B); EPS CAGR ~8.5% ($3.15 → $4.73 est) as rate base and data-center load grow faster than the customer count.
Acceleration (the 2nd derivative): modestly positive — the data-center pipeline (3.4 GW contracted, up from a standing start) is pulling forward load growth above the historical ~6% earnings trend. This is the single feature that lifts the exponential score above a generic utility's.
Room to run: a regulated utility earns a capped, regulator-set return on invested capital — there is no winner-take-all TAM to capture. The upside is bounded by allowed ROE and rate-base size, so a 3-5× from here is structurally implausible.
Reinvestment runway: large and real — capex ~$2.5B/yr into generation, storage, and grid — but it is funded by debt and equity issuance, not free cash flow, which caps the compounding rate and dilutes shareholders over time.
Exponential Potential: Low-Moderate (4/10). Own it for a bond-like ~2.7% yield plus mid-single-digit rate-base growth, not for a fast multibagger. The data-center story is the one thing that could surprise to the upside — worth watching, not yet worth a premium.
Revenue: FY25 $4.36B, +9.6% (FY24 $3.98B; FY23 $4.03B). Utility revenue is weather- and rate-case-driven, so year-to-year moves are lumpy, not a growth signal.
Earnings: net income $810M FY25 (EPS $3.15), up from $690M FY24 (EPS $2.69) — a ~17% jump helped by rate relief and AFUDC. Q1'26 net income $224M (EPS $0.87 GAAP, $0.82 ongoing).
Cash flow: operating CF $1.17B FY25, capex −$2.48B → free cash flow −$1.31B. FCF has been structurally negative every year (−$1.08B FY24, −$0.99B FY23) — this is normal for a utility in a heavy build cycle, but it means growth is funded externally and the dividend is paid from financing, not FCF.
Balance sheet: total debt $12.35B, net debt $11.79B, net-debt/EBITDA ~5.7× — high in absolute terms but typical for regulated utilities with predictable cash flows and rate-base-backed assets ($20.3B net PP&E). Interest coverage is thin at ~1.9× (TTM), the key leverage watch-item.
6. Valuation — priced in or room?
LNT trades at 24.5× trailing EPS, 7.2× sales, 15.5× EV/EBITDA — a premium to its own utility-sector history (utilities often trade high-teens P/E). The bull's defense is that EPS grows into it: forward P/E is 22.8× (FY26E) → 21.2× (FY27E) → 16.5× (FY30E) on consensus. That is a reasonable multiple for a ~6-8% grower if the data-center growth is durable — but it is not cheap, and the ~2.7% dividend yield is only average for the sector. A PEG-style read (~23× / ~8% growth ≈ 2.9×) confirms you are paying up. Street targets (context): consensus $76.2, high $81, low $74 — a tight band that itself signals "fairly valued, limited upside." Our ~$79 base fair value sits inside that band. Not a value buy; a fairly-priced compounder with no margin of safety at today's price.
7. Technicals (from the tech block)
Trend:up. $78.03 sits above the 50-DMA ($73.10) and 200-DMA ($69.42), with the 50 above the 200 (golden-cross posture). MACD +1.24 (positive).
Location:at the 52-week high ($78.03) — 0% off the peak, +28% off the 52-week low ($60.76). No drawdown cushion; you'd be buying the top of the range.
Momentum: RSI(14) 76 — overbought (>70). This is a stretched-entry warning: the stock has run and is due for consolidation or a pullback.
Relative strength: LNT +27% 12-mo vs SPY +20.6% (and vs QQQ +30%); +8.5% 3-mo vs SPY +13.7%. Outperformed the market over 12 months but lagged over the last 3 — momentum cooling.
Read: technicals say "good uptrend, bad entry." An overbought RSI at a 52-wk high argues for patience — a pullback toward the rising 50-DMA (~$73) would be a materially better risk/reward.
8. Moat & competitive position
Alliant's moat is regulatory, not competitive: as a state-sanctioned monopoly in its Iowa and Wisconsin service territories, it faces no direct customer competition. The "moat" is the regulatory compact — the right to earn an allowed return on rate base — and its durability depends entirely on constructive regulators (IPL's Iowa and WPL's Wisconsin commissions). The competitive risk is not a rival utility but regulatory disallowance, rate-case outcomes, and cost-recovery timing. The data-center demand pipeline strengthens the growth case but also concentrates it in a few large customers whose siting decisions can shift (as one already did from WPL to IPL in Q1'26).
Peer set (market cap, FMP-provided): CMS Energy $24.0B, Edison International $29.1B, Evergy $20.3B, NiSource $22.9B, Emera $16.4B, Algonquin $18.7B — the closest regulated-utility comps. (The list also includes non-comparable names: nuclear/SMR plays Oklo $9.1B and Fermi $5.1B, Korea Electric $16.0B, and Brazil's SABESP $19.7B.) Among true peers, LNT's ~23× forward multiple is at the richer end, justified only by the data-center growth premium.
9. Management, capital allocation & guidance
Capital allocation: capex-forward — ~$2.5B/yr into generation, energy storage, and grid to grow rate base, funded by debt and equity (net debt +$1.4B in FY25; modest ongoing share issuance). Dividend is the priority return (paid $521M FY25, ~64% payout of ongoing EPS); no buybacks (appropriate for a capital-hungry utility).
Insider activity: the sampled window (April 2026) is routine — director deferred-stock-unit awards and one small in-kind tax withholding by an EVP. No open-market discretionary selling or buying cluster to read into.
Management's own guidance (the earnings-release track, half-weighted — they talk their own book): In the Q1'26 release (SEC 8-K, filed 2026-05-01), management reaffirmed 2026 ongoing EPS guidance of $3.36–$3.46 and cited "over a decade" track record of >6% compound annual earnings growth. CEO Lisa Barton highlighted "continued momentum in data center growth," including the new ~370 MW Iowa agreement bringing total contracted data-center demand to ~3.4 GW across five executed agreements. Guidance assumes IPL/WPL earn authorized returns, normal weather, and execution of the capex/financing plan, with a consolidated effective tax rate of (29%). This is management's self-interested framing and is weighted accordingly; it is consistent with the analyst consensus (FY26E EPS $3.42).
10. Catalysts & what to watch
Next earnings: 2026-08-06 (Q2'26; Street EPS $0.70, revenue ~$988M). Watch for guidance reaffirmation and any data-center agreement updates.
Data-center agreements: new or expanded electric-service contracts (beyond the current 3.4 GW / five agreements) are the primary upside driver; customer siting shifts are the risk.
Rate cases: IPL (Iowa) and WPL (Wisconsin) rate-relief outcomes — the direct lever on earnings; a disallowance is the main downside.
Interest-rate path: as a leveraged utility, LNT's valuation and financing costs are rate-sensitive.
Capex / in-service dates: on-time, on-budget delivery of generation and storage projects (tariff/supply-chain risk flagged in the 8-K).
Thesis tripwires (what would change the call): an unconstructive rate-case outcome; loss or slippage of a major data-center agreement; interest-coverage falling below ~1.7×; or a dividend-growth pause.
11. Key risks
Leverage & rates (structural): $11.8B net debt, 5.7× net-debt/EBITDA, ~1.9× interest coverage. Rising rates raise financing costs and pressure the valuation of a bond-proxy stock.
Regulatory disallowance: the entire return depends on IPL/WPL earning authorized rates; an adverse rate case or cost-recovery denial hits earnings directly.
Valuation / no margin of safety: ~23× forward at a 52-wk high, overbought RSI — priced for continued execution with little cushion.
Negative free cash flow: growth and the dividend are funded by external capital; a capital-markets shock or equity dilution is a real risk in a heavy build cycle.
Data-center concentration: the growth premium rests on a few large customers whose siting/timing can shift (one already moved from WPL to IPL in Q1'26).
Weather: retail sales swing with temperatures (each cited as ~$0.03–0.04/share in the 8-K).
12. Verdict, position sizing & monitoring
Watch. Alliant is a well-managed regulated utility with a genuine, differentiated growth accelerant (3.4 GW of contracted data-center load) supporting its decade-plus ~6% EPS-growth record and a reliable ~2.7% dividend. But at ~23× forward earnings, at a 52-week high, with an overbought RSI of 76, on 5.7× net-debt/EBITDA, the stock already reflects that story — our ~$79 base fair value implies roughly 1% upside, with no margin of safety. There is no expert conviction in the Synthos KB to override the quant read.
Sizing: if owned at all, an income/defensive holding at ~1–2%, and better initiated on a pullback toward the rising 50-DMA (~$73) than at today's stretched level.
Monitoring: re-underwrite on the §10 tripwires; formal re-score each earnings print. This verdict is logged as a tracked Synthos call as of 2026-07-03 at $78.03.
Single biggest risk: rising rates or a regulatory disallowance on a highly leveraged, negative-FCF balance sheet.
Provenance & disclosures
Traceability: 0 KB claims, breadth 0 — no expert coverage; this verdict is fundamentals- and quant-driven, and no claim_ids are cited because none exist. Fabricated conviction is structurally impossible (claim-ID reconciliation).
Data as-of: fundamentals 2026-03-31 (Q1'26) · estimates & prices 2026-07-02/03 · management guidance from SEC 8-K filed 2026-05-01. Forward figures are analyst consensus (FMP) or our own scenario model, labeled as estimates.
Management caveat: the reaffirmed $3.36–$3.46 guidance is management's own book, half-weighted by design.
Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalized. Hypothetical/forward figures are labeled; the only performance numbers Synthos will headline are the live, real-money Flagship's.
Version: 2026-07-03. Prior versions available via the deep-dive version dropdown ("based on the info at the time").