Well, good afternoon and welcome to Coastal Electric Cooperative's 84th annual meeting. We're glad you could be with us online today. And for those of you who came and registered all day yesterday and this morning, we appreciate your participation in your annual meeting and especially after we had to delay it due to the weather a little while back. So we're glad to have the annual meeting here. And I want to say my name is Lou Green. It's my pleasure to be here to help guide us through the business session. And we'll get through the business session and then we'll draw for some prizes at the end. As the meeting begins, I'm going to ask Mr. James Bunton to come forward and offer an invocation.

Thank you, Lou. Please bow your heads. Dear Heavenly Father, we gather here today with gratitude for the blessings of this community and our members as we come together as members of the Coastal Electric Cooperative. We thank you for the energy that sustains our lives and the commitment of those who work tirelessly to provide it. We ask you for your guidance in the discussions and decisions today. Grant us wisdom and patience as we seek to serve our members and enhance the well-being of our community. Help us to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us fostering innovation and sustainability in our endeavors. May our conversations be respectful and our goals align with the greater good. Let us work together with the spirit of cooperation, understanding and respect for one another. We pray for the safety and well-being of all those who work on the front lines ensuring that power flows to our homes and businesses. Bless their efforts and keep them safe. Thank you for the opportunity to have this gathering and make a positive impact on this community. May our meeting be productive and our plans be guided by your light. In your name we pray. Amen.

Thank you, Jamie. I'd like to invite you and in fact all of us here to stand and let's say the Pledge of Allegiance together, if you will. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, I'd like to invite Mr. Bunton back, he's the chairman of the board, and ask him to introduce the other members of the board of directors for Coastal Electric Cooperative. All right. And I'll ask you to stand as I introduce you.

Of course, I'm District 2, James Bunton. I'm the Chairman. Mr. Ian Padgett is the Vice Chairman. He is not here today. He has been under the weather and he wants to give his respects for not being here. But he hates that he missed this. Mr. Terry Hoff is our secretary. Mr. Johnny Frank is our treasurer. Mr. Lavern Polk is over District 1. Mr. Jamey Copeland is District 4. Mr. Bill Smoak is District 5. Mr. Wendell McDonald is District 7. And then Mr. Jim Bryan is District 8. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate everything. At this time, I'll turn it back over to Mr. Lou.

I mentioned that everyone been registering all day  yesterday and then this morning. And when registration closed, there were939 members who had registered. Important, because you need 448 to be the quorum to be able to conduct business at your annual meeting. State law requires and your bylaws require 5% of the membership. So we are, we just about, just about doubled it. So we're in good shape. Let's do business. If there's no objection, we will consider approved the notice to the members that was sent out. And with the same without objection, we will consider approval of the proof of the mailing of the notice which I have here in my hand. We also have a copy of the annual meeting minutes from 2023 which gives a brief summary of the actions that were taken at that meeting. We'll dispense with a reading of the minutes without objection. There's no objection. We'll consider those accepted as submitted. Every year about this time, it's a good time for you to hear a little bit about what's been going on with your cooperative. I know, and we know that you elect a board of trustees that you entrust with the job of governing your cooperative. But we're going to ask CEO Mark Walling to come forward and give you some highlights today. Mr. Walling.

Thank you, Lou. I'd like to once again, welcome to our 84th annual meeting. We would like to express our appreciation and your patience for understanding the need to postpone this, which was scheduled about six weeks ago. As everyone knows, Hurricane Helene had different ideas for us. And I'd also like to thank you for your patience during the process of us restoring service to our members. Virtually all of our members were impacted by this storm at one point or another. Over 99%. So like I say, less than 1% were basically unaffected. We lost transmission service to about 70% of our substations. But fortunately they were restored rather quickly, the first day from our transmissions service provider. We ended up having about 110 broken poles, many spans of wire that was down from trees and limbs that had to be spliced back together and reinstalled, which took quite a bit of time, as you are well aware. We did get outside assistance from three sister cooperatives from within the state, which we are greatly appreciative of, as well as some contractors from outside the state of South Carolina. We are still tabulating the repair costs from this incident. Our estimate is currently at about $1.2 million. Thankfully, the FEMA or the Federal Emergency Management Agency has declared our area a disaster area and approved for financial assistance for this. So we are working with them at this time to apply for that assistance. So we are hopeful that we will not have to burden the membership for very much of that cost and expense. I want to talk briefly about our financial condition and then talk a little bit about rates.

Our growth has been relatively flat over the last several years. However, we are beginning to experience some modest growth and at the end of August we had 12,224 active services. Our utility plant grew $3.8 million, which is about 5.5% from March 31, 2023 to March 31, 2024, and our total plant now is just over $73 million. For the second year in a row, the board has authorized the retirement of $300,000 in capital credits to the membership. This retirement will be out in December for members of record from 1996 and 97, and that is about 50% increase in retirement from recent history. Those checks or bill credits, if it's less than $5, you'll receive a credit on your bill rather than a paper check, but they will go out in December or be credited to your account in December. So watch for those checks and/or credits on your billing statement. You know, as a nonprofit member-owned cooperative, our primary mission here is to provide safe and reliable power for our members at the lowest possible cost and our employees and your board here works diligently to keep those rates stable.

But unfortunately, not everything is in our control. There are many issues that electric cooperatives are facing in regards to rising costs in our industry. Government regulations, as well as substantially increased material costs and higher wholesale power rates continue to drive our costs upward. These challenges are not unique to just Coastal Electric. All three of South Carolina's large utilities, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, as well as Santee Cooper, have announced rate adjustments during 2024 and our sister co-ops in the state, which are 18, are implementing similar measures due to these rising costs. I'm happy to say for the past 11 years we have been fortunate and that we've been able to stand before you at each and every one of those annual meetings and inform you with good news that our rates were being able to kept stable and our base energy increase was last changed back in 2013.

Unfortunately, I'm not here today to tell you that same bit of news. With the rising costs we are seeing, especially the rise in wholesale power costs from our primary supplier, Santee Cooper. They're one of several that we do get power from, but we're seeing significant increases from them due to the reg lock rolling off in 2025 which we have spoken about in past annual meetings. Unfortunately, it's driving our costs to where we cannot absorb all of those increases and so we will have no choice but to increase rates in 2025. We assure you that we are committed to increasing rates only as a last resort. The board has not yet made a decision on exactly what that rate increase will be. We are working on our budget now, but it appears that that increase will be in the range of 6 to 8%. We will notify all of our members just as soon as we have enough information to make a final decision.

Again, please know that we are doing everything we can to keep your electric costs to a minimum while continuing to provide the highest quality of service to our members. Thank you again for your participation in this year's annual meeting. I want to thank our employees and the volunteers that help make this possible today and yesterday. And lastly, I want to express my deepest thanks to the membership as well as the board for allowing me to serve you as your CEO. I'll turn the meeting now over to our attorney, Mr. David Black.

My name is David Black. I'm the cooperative's general counsel. Pursuant to the cooperative's bylaws, the business and affairs of the cooperative are managed by a board of eight members. One of the important things we do at the Annual Meeting is to elect board members. We currently have three seats to elect to the board of trustees. Pursuant to the cooperative's bylaws, notice was previously furnished to the membership via mailing. The following three seats for Coastal Electric Cooperative's Board of Trustees are now open: Districts 1, 6, and 8. The following candidates have applied and have been found to be qualified by the Cooperative's Nominating Qualification Committee: District 1, Mr. Lavern Polk, District 6, Mr. Terry Hoff, and District 8, Mr. Jim Bryan. If only one individual is nominated to run for election for a trustee position, then the individual presiding at the Annual Meeting may announce that the nominated individual is elected by acclamation and no voice vote is required. Because there is not a contested election for the three trustee seats, the candidates are hereby elected and seated by acclamation. Congratulations, Mr.Polk, Mr. Hoff, and Mr. Bryan. Now I'll turn the meeting over to Mr. Green. Congrats.

Thanks, David. Thank you for participating in that part of your business for the annual meeting assigned to the membership. We don't have any other things on the agenda that we know of, but I'll ask if there's any unfinished business to come before the meeting at this time. Hearing none, is there any new business to come before the meeting of members at this time? I hear none. In that case, having concluded the agenda, we will consider this meeting adjourned. Thank you for participating, but don't go away. Although the meeting is adjourned, we've got one more thing to do and that is draw for a few prizes that we do every year. So if you'll, while I'm talking, if you'll go ahead and whoever's going to pull the roll cage up here into which we've put all of the registration tickets or part of the registration tickets that you filled out or you brought with you to the annual meeting when you registered, we're going to roll the cage, mix them up real well, and draw for some winners:

3 grand prize winners:

• Lawnmower – Stacy G Banis
• Flatscreen TV – Ashley D Crosby
• $300 bill credit – Dorothy J. Shepherd

$100 account credits

1. David / Annette Lyons
2. Roosevelt Chaplin
3. Mabel M. Williams
4. Yahya Peterson
5. Vonlehe Bailey
6. Wynelle Harrison
7. Susan R. Solomon
8. Felisha Glover
9. Mary A / Isaiah White
10. Gwendolyn Colleton
11. Stephanie Parham
12. William E Smyly
13. Kenneth Case
14. Suzanne Adams
15. Latonya N. Smith

Congratulations to all of you for winning and thank you for participating in your 2024 Annual Meeting. Well, I hope you have a great weekend and a good afternoon. Good day.