NISOURCE INC

7. Short-Term Borrowings

We generate short-term borrowings from our revolving credit facility, commercial paper program, accounts receivable transfer programs, and term credit agreements. Each of these borrowing sources is described further below.

Revolving Credit Facility. We maintain a revolving credit facility to fund ongoing working capital requirements, including the provision of liquidity support for our commercial paper program, provide for issuance of letters of credit and also for general corporate purposes. Our revolving credit facility has a program limit of $1.85 billion and is comprised of a syndicate of banks. We hadno outstanding borrowings under this facility as of September 30, 2024 and December 31, 2023.

Commercial Paper Program. On February 9, 2024 we increased our commercial paper program limit from $1.50 billion to $1.85 billion. We had $257.0 million and $1,061.0 million of commercial paper outstanding with weighted-average interest rates of 4.95% and 5.65% as of September 30, 2024 and December 31, 2023, respectively.

Accounts Receivable Transfer Programs. Columbia of Ohio, NIPSCO, and Columbia of Pennsylvania each maintain a receivables agreement whereby they transfer their customer accounts receivables to third-party financial institutions through consolidated special purpose entities. Thethree agreements expire between May 2025 and October 2025 and may be further extended if mutually agreed to by the parties thereto.

All receivables transferred to third parties are valued at face value, which approximates fair value due to their short-term nature. The amount of the undivided percentage ownership interest in the accounts receivables transferred is determined in part by required loss reserves under the agreements.

Transfers of accounts receivable are accounted for as secured borrowings resulting in the recognition of short-term borrowings on the Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (unaudited). As of September 30, 2024, the maximum amount of debt that could be borrowed related to our accounts receivable programs was $225.0 million.

We hadzero and $337.6 million of short-term borrowings related to the securitization transactions as of September 30, 2024 and December 31, 2023, respectively.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2024 and 2023, $337.6 million and $62.2 million, respectively were recorded as cash flows used for financing activities related to the change in short-term borrowings due to securitization transactions. For the accounts receivable transfer programs, we pay used facility fees for amounts borrowed, unused commitment fees for amounts not borrowed, and upfront renewal fees. Fees associated with the securitization transactions were $0.4 million and $0.5 million for the three months ended September 30, 2024 and 2023, and $1.3 million and $2.1 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Columbia of Ohio, NIPSCO and Columbia of Pennsylvania remain responsible for collecting on the receivables securitized, and the receivables cannot be transferred to another party.

Term Credit Agreements. At December 31, 2023, we had $1.0 billion, and $650.0 million outstanding under term credit agreements with interest rates of 6.41% and 6.50%, respectively. On January 3, 2024, we terminated and repaid in full our $1.0 billion term credit agreement and our $650.0 million term credit agreement with proceeds from the NIPSCO Minority Interest Transaction.

Items listed above, excluding the term credit agreements, are presented net in the Condensed Statements of Consolidated Cash Flows (unaudited) as their maturities are less than 90 days.