Florida-headquartered NextEra Energy, one of the largest U.S. power utilities, is set to buy Virginia-based Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at about $67 billion. The companies announced the deal on May 18, one day after several outlets including POWER reported the energy groups were discussing an agreement to create a utility giant that would have assets from coast to coast. The purchase will create the largest regulated electric utility in the world.
Analysts have said the deal is tied to NextEra’s goal of being a leading player in supplying power for the energy-intensive data center sector. Dominion, with four million customers in Virginia and the Carolinas, is the utility currently most closely tied to providing electricity for the so-called “Data Center Alley” of Loudon County, Virginia.
NextEra’s market cap of $195 million makes it the largest U.S. utility by valuation, almost twice as much as Southern Co., the next-largest utility, which has a market cap of about $104 billion. NextEra also is the biggest renewable energy developer in the U.S. The company includes a regulated utility serving about six million customers in Florida. The company also has an unregulated unit focused on renewable energy (click here for a map of NextEra’s operations).
The companies on Monday said NextEra shareholders will own 74.5% of the combined company, while Dominion investors will own 25.5%. NextEra has an enterprise value—a financial metric measuring a company’s total economic value—of about $303 billion. About one-third of that value is debt. Dominion’s enterprise value is about $111 billion, with about $50 billion in debt.
NextEra CEO John Ketchum said in a statement, “This is a historic moment for our two companies and for the states we are privileged to serve. Electricity demand is rising faster than it has in decades. Projects are getting larger and more complex. Customers need affordable and reliable power now, not years from now.
“We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever—not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies,” said Ketchum. “It enables us to buy, build, finance and operate more efficiently, which translates into more affordable electricity for our customers in the long run.”
Robert Blue, chair, president and CEO of Dominion Energy, said, “Dominion Energy and NextEra Energy share a deep commitment to delivering reliable and affordable energy and to the customers and communities we are honored to serve. This combination brings together two strong operating platforms and creates an even stronger energy partner for Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, with the scale and balance sheet to deliver the generation, transmission and grid investments our customers and economies need.
“Most importantly, this combination is built around our customers,” said Blue. “The bill credits we are committing to, the continued investments in generation, reliability and storm resiliency and our commitments to retain our team and dual headquarters in Juno Beach [Florida] and Richmond [Virginia], as well as Dominion Energy South Carolina’s existing operational headquarters in Cayce, reflect the values that have always defined Dominion Energy. We are excited to bring these great companies together and to write the next chapter in every community we serve.”
The combined companies will operate under NextEra’s name and trade on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol NEE. The companies noted they will own 110 GW of power generation capacity across a variety of energy sources.
Data Center Power Demand
Both utilities have been involved in recent transactions related to increased power demand from data centers. NextEra has an agreement with Google tied to the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa. It also has partnered with technology group Meta to add 190 MW of solar energy and 168 MW of battery storage to the grid in New Mexico.
NextEra also this year started commercial operation of the Crossroads-Hobbs-Roadrunner project, a 137-mile, $291.6-million double-circuit 345-kV electrical transmission line in New Mexico.
NextEra’s share value has increased about 15% this year. Ketchum has said NextEra wants to take advantage of what he called “America’s golden age of power demand,” tied to the rise of artificial intelligence and data centers.
Bloomberg News reported that NextEra’s offer for Dominion values the Virginia utility’s stock at about $76 a share. Dominion’s stock closed Friday at $61.73. Share of NextEra closed Friday at $93.36.
Ketchum will serve as chairman and CEO of the combined company; Blue will serve as president and CEO of regulated utilities and as a member of the board of directors. The combined company’s board will include 10 directors from NextEra Energy, along with four from Dominion Energy.
Utility Acquisitions
A NextEra-Dominion deal would be the latest in a series of recent major transactions in the electric utility sector. Global Infrastructure Partners, the infrastructure investment unit of BlackRock, and energy company EQT in March announced a $33.4-billion deal to acquire AES, a utility with assets in several sectors, including merchant generation and regulated wires businesses in Indiana and Ohio. AES also has investments in renewable energy and energy storage, along with legacy gas and coal assets mostly in Latin America.
BlackRock, as part of an investor group that includes Microsoft and Nvidia, last year bought one of the world’s largest data center operators. The $40-billion deal was for U.S.-based Aligned Data Centers, which has dozens of facilities tied to computing capacity for artificial intelligence.
Blackstone, another investment management company, last year acquired TXNM, a New Mexico-based utility company, in an $11.5-billion deal. That transaction was among several by Blackstone last year.
NextEra’s Evolution
NextEra Energy was founded as regional utility Florida Power & Light in 1925. It has evolved into a diverse energy provider over the past century. The company’s subsidiaries operate nuclear power plants in Florida, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, along with solar and wind farms in states including Arizona and Texas. The company also has nearly 13,000 miles of transmission lines across the U.S. and in Canada.
Analysts noted an acquisition of Dominion would expand NextEra’s footprint in the PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest electricity market. NextEra currently is only active in PJM via competitive transmission projects.
The two utilities only overlap in the wholesale power market is in New England. NextEra owns the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire, along with generation assets in Massachusetts and Maine. Dominion owns the Millstone Nuclear Plant in Connecticut.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
