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NextEra Energy will buy competitor Dominion Energy for around 57 billion euros. 10 million customer accounts.
The North American NextEra Energy or comprar to competitor Dominion Energy for around 67 billion dollars, around 57 billion eurosin an operation that will create one of the largest energy companies in the world.
According to them, the merger will give rise to world’s largest electricity company regulated by market capitalizationat a time of strong growth in energy demand in the United States due to artificial intelligence and the expansion of data centers.
The operation, announced this Monday, will be financed entirely in shares, with NextEra offering 0.8138 of its shares for each Dominion share.
Dominion shareholders will continue to receive the current quarterly dividend until the transaction closes, in addition to a one-time cash payment of $360 million at the close of the transaction.
After the merger, shareholders of NextEra will be with 74,5% of the combined company, while the shareholders of the Dominion will detain 25,5%.
The merged company is expected to serve approximately 10 million customer accounts in the North American states of Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Dominion, based in Richmond, Virginia, powers hundreds of data centers in that state and provides regulated electricity service to 3.6 million homes and businesses in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
The company also provides regulated service natural gas to approximately 500,000 customers in South Carolina.
NextEra, based in Juno Beach, Florida, owns Florida Power & Light Company, which provides electricity to about 12 million people in that state.
In December, NextEra and Google Cloud announced the enlargement of the existing partnership to build new data center ‘campuses’ in the United States.
“We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale is more important than ever — not because of size per se, but because scale translates into capital and operational efficiencies. It allows us to buy, build, finance and operate more efficiently, which translates, in the long term, into more affordable electricity for our customers,” said NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum in a statement.
The new company will have dual headquarters in Juno Beach, Florida, and Richmond, Virginia, while also maintaining the current operational headquarters of Dominion Energy South Carolina, in Cayce, South Carolina, and NextEra’s executive chairman, John Ketchum, will be chairman of the Board of Directors and executive president of the merged company.
The group will use the name NextEra and will continue to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the Board of Directors will be comprised of 10 managers from NextEra and four from Dominion.
The operation, already approved by the boards of directors of both companies, should be completed in 12 to 18 months.
The merger still depends on NextEra and Dominion shareholder approval, as well as various regulatory clearances, including from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The agreement comes at a time when consumers and political authorities are contesting the impact of artificial intelligence data centers on electricity bills.
Lawmakers in at least six states — including Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — are stepping up efforts to try block tariff increases proposed by public service companies. Some are even putting pressure on companies to completely change their systems modernization financing model.
On the New York Stock Exchange, Dominion shares rose more than 9%, while NextEra shares fell around 5%.
