Dominion Energy, Inc.

Welcome to the Dominion Energy Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, each of your lines is in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of today's presentation, we will open the floor for questions. Instructions will be given for the procedure to follow if you would like to ask a question. I would now like to turn the call over to David McFarland, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer.

Good morning and thank you for joining Dominion Energy's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Earnings materials, including today's prepared remarks, contain forward-looking statements and estimates that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, for a discussion of factors that may cause results to differ from management's estimates and expectations. This morning, we will discuss some measures of our company's performance that differ from those recognized by GAAP. Reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, which we can calculate, are contained in the earnings release kit. I encourage you to visit our investor relations website to review webcast slides as well as the earnings release kit. Joining today's call are Bob Blue, Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Steven Ridge, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of senior management.

I will now turn the call over to Steven. Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. Since the conclusion of the business review almost two and a half years ago, we've remained steadfastly focused on three top priorities. First, consistent achievement of our financial commitments. Second, continued achievement of major construction milestones for the coastal Virginia offshore wind project. and third, constructive achievement of regulatory outcomes that demonstrate our ability to work cooperatively with regulators and stakeholders to benefit both customers and shareholders. As we'll discuss today, we continue to demonstrate success against these priorities, extending our track record of high quality and consistent execution. I'll cover financial results and demand trends in my remarks, then Bob will provide updates on the NextEra energy combination CVAO, regulatory results, and other business items. Turning first to second quarter results as shown on slide three. Second quarter operating earnings were 79 cents per share, which includes three cents of RNG 45Z credits. A summary of earnings drivers relative to the prior year period is included in schedule four of the earnings release kit. Second quarter gap results were 37 cents per share. A summary of all adjustments between operating and gap results is included in Schedule 2 of the Earnings Release Kit. Similar to last year, we've had a strong first half, which positions us well to deliver strong full-year results. Additionally, we are reaffirming all financial guidance provided on our fourth quarter earnings call, including operating earnings, credit, dividend, and long-term growth guidance. Turning to financing on slide four, we've now completed our common equity program for 2026, consistent with our ATM guidance on the fourth quarter call. Full year 2025 and Q2 LTM FFO to debt metrics are both above 15%, demonstrating our continuing commitment to our previously communicated credit-related targets. Turning briefly to sales, We're continuing to see strong sales in our service areas, driven by continued economic growth and data center expansion. Notably, nine of the DOM Zone's top 10 all-time peak days have occurred this year, including the eight highest summer peak days, which have all occurred in the last two months. We want to take a moment to acknowledge the outstanding work of our colleagues who have maintained exemplary system reliability in the face of record-setting demand and difficult weather conditions. Their commitment and dedication on behalf of our customers and communities is worthy of special recognition, even if most of them would tell you they were simply doing their job. Turning to data centers on slide five, We now have over 53 gigawatts of data center capacity in various stages of contracting, including approximately 12 gigawatts of capacity contracted under electric service agreements. To put that in context, we've added over 5 gigawatts of contracts, or roughly 11% since the end of last year. Since our last update, we continue to see robust and durable demand from our differentiated, high quality, low risk data center customers. Importantly, these customers consistently tell us that many of their highest value workloads need to be built and need to stay in Virginia because of the unique network density, connectivity, and ecosystem advantages that have made Virginia the world's leading data center market. And we're bringing those customers onto our system in the right way. protecting existing customers from cost shifts while mitigating stranded cost risk by utilizing a large load framework that ensures these customers pay their fair share of the investments required to support their growth. In closing, we've had a strong first half of the year, and I'm highly confident in our ability to deliver on our financial commitments, including our 2026 operating EPS and credit targets. Our financial plan strikes the right balance of appropriately conservative, but not unreasonably so. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bob.

Thank you, Steven. I'll begin with safety on slide six. Our employee OSHA injury recordable rate for the first half of the year was 0.36, which remains well below industry average. Safety is our first core value, and we must continue to focus relentlessly on improving our safety performance. Turning next to our announced combination with NextEra Energy. As we detailed in May, this transaction represents a truly transformational opportunity to bring together two world-class utilities with 238 years of collective industry experience to even better serve millions of regulated customers across four states. Looking ahead, we believe we can accomplish far more together than we count apart. Under the proposed terms of the merger, Dominion Energy customers would receive $2.25 billion in shareholder-funded bill credits representing meaningful customer value. Over the longer term, customers and communities would benefit from a stronger company with the scale and capabilities to buy, build, finance, and operate critical energy infrastructure more efficiently, helping support reliability, affordability, and economic growth. Earlier this month, we filed our joint proxy statement on Form S-4, as well as our state and federal regulatory applications with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, the North Carolina Utilities Commission, and the Public Service Commission of South Carolina, as well as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Virginia State Corporation Commission has now issued a procedural schedule, including evidentiary hearings beginning on November 17th. In South Carolina, the proposed scheduling order would set a hearing date of December 8, with a final order by January 29, 2027. The South Carolina Senate, House, and Office of Regulatory Staff have indicated they do not object to the company's proposed schedule. We expect the Commission to rule on the proposed timeline next week. The timelines for each of the proceedings are shown on slide 7. I could not be more excited about the combination of these two companies. will continue to share updates as we progress through shareholder and regulatory processes. Turning next to offshore wind. As illustrated on slide eight, CEVOW continues to achieve significant de-risking milestones, as evidenced by its 81% completion status. Let me highlight a few factors that give me great confidence in the successful completion of this project. First, supply chain. We're making excellent progress toward completing all remaining equipment, a key project milestone. 100% of the cells, 99% of towers, and 85% of blades have now been fabricated. Towers will be completed in the coming days followed by final blades in October. Second, installation. As of today, we've successfully installed 31 turbines with the installation of the 32nd currently in progress, averaging approximately two days of operations per installation from jack up to jack down in line with our prior assumptions. It's worth noting that the 31 turbines installed today have a capacity more than 450 megawatts, rivaling the magnitude of some of our fossil units. We expect the third and final offshore substation to be energized by year end, which is especially meaningful because it will signify that approximately half of project investment adjusted for network upgrade costs has achieved in-service status. That's a meaningful milestone toward project de-risking. And third, proof of concept. We've now successfully completed every major fabrication, construction, commissioning, and operation evolution multiple times. This is noteworthy because we've clearly and affirmatively answered the question, will this work? Every type of component is in service and functioning as expected. Turbines, inter-array cables, substations, export cables, and onshore transmission and distribution infrastructure are all working together to provide much needed power to our customers. In fact, in recent weeks, as we've set new demand peaks, we've done everything possible at the request of system operators to deliver the maximum possible amount of power from CVAO. In my mind, it's critical to note that CVAO is significantly different from a traditional power plant, and we're not waiting for a final switch to be flipped to confirm proof of concept or to qualify investment for regulatory recovery. Rather, CVAO is effectively 176 individual power plants, each entering service upon completion. This allows the project to clearly demonstrate technical feasibility and deliver energy to the grid well before the final turbine begins to spin. That's why for CVAO, it's important to note the project's de-risking is heavily front-end loaded, and in our view, mostly behind us. Turning to slide nine, let me update you on expected timing of installation of the project's final turbine, which we're adjusting by six months to reflect three updated assumptions. First, given previously reported delays with Charybdis and BOEM suspension order, weather and vessel maintenance contingency had been significantly reduced. Today, we're adding incremental weather and vessel maintenance schedule contingency to the plan, which assumes somewhat better than normal weather consistent with our overall weather experience thus far, as well as the continued optimization of our installation iterations. Second, we're adjusting the schedule to account for additional time required for our loadouts at PMT based on observed performance times to date relative to our prior assumption. Finally, based on continued data gathering, we're adjusting the schedule to account for what we expect will be longer duration jacking operations for certain remaining turbine locations. Relative to the other approximately 80% of turbine locations, we expect, based on subsea geotechnical analysis, this subgroup to require additional time for jacking operations. Moving now to capital investment. As shown on slide 10, we're updating the project cost estimate by a little less than $250 million. Our most recent budget was $11.4 billion, inclusive of $123 million of unused contingency. As highlighted on our last call, we've added $228 million for additional tariff costs associated with revisions to the prior steel and aluminum guidance, and we've subtracted $502 million to account for the reallocation of certain PJM-assigned network upgrade costs. We've also added about $234 million of miscellaneous costs that primarily reflect additional cable protection to account for faster underwater currents, fuel costs, mitigation costs for the more difficult jacking locations, and final onshore construction costs. The total of all these adjustments is a net reduction to project costs of around $40 million, so essentially a wash. From there, we've added about $288 million to account for the incremental two quarters to complete the final turbine installation. You'll note that this averages out to about $144 million per additional quarter, which is below the low end of our prior rule of thumb guidance of $150 million to $200 million per quarter. As a result, we're increasing our project cost estimate by approximately 2%. to $11.65 billion, which continues to include $123 million of unused contingency. Turning to slide 11, the projects Cost Sharing and Risk Sharing continue to work as intended to protect customers and shareholders with minimal changes to LCOE or customer bill impacts. We anticipate that approximately one-third of the most recent cost increase will be shared with our financing partner. CEVAO remains one of the most affordable sources of energy for our customers. Our analysis indicates that the project is expected to generate fuel savings of approximately $5 billion for customers during the project's first 10 years of operation. On regulatory, we received a final order in our 2025 rider filing proceeding on July 29, approving 100% of our revenue request. As I mentioned last quarter, an all-of-the-above approach to energy supply, including CEVO, is critical to ensuring continued reliability amidst real-time growing demand in our service areas, as evidenced by new demand peaks that Steven mentioned earlier. Building new energy generation is a core competency of ours, as demonstrated in recent years with our successful development of thousands of megawatts of renewable generation, as well as combined cycle plants at Greensville, Brunswick, and Warren County. We continue to advance the development of new generation capacity consistent with our update last quarter. We recently filed the air permits for two new natural gas-fired combined cycle plants at Kennedy Station in South Carolina and at Mount Storm in West Virginia, representing nearly 5 gigawatts of new capacity. In addition to producing much-needed energy for our customers, these projects will be an economic benefit for the states in which they operate, generating thousands of new jobs, billions of dollars of economic investment, and meaningful local tax revenue. Now I'll turn to other business updates as shown on slide 12. In South Carolina, the Comprehensive Settlement Agreement and DESC's electric rate case were unanimously approved by the Public Service Commission of South Carolina in June, with rates becoming effective at the beginning of July. We appreciate the engagement of all parties. We've now achieved successful settlements in each of our last four South Carolina-based rate cases across our electric and gas businesses. Finally on millstone, we've heard recently from the regulators in Connecticut and we expect a solicitation decision from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection regarding the facilities bid and the zero carbon energy request for proposals in the near term. Consistent with the process laid out previously, we anticipate negotiations with local state utilities will begin thereafter and contracts will then be submitted to the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority for approval. The timeline for which is up to 180 days. The facility's existing PPA has delivered tremendous value to customers, lower costs and significantly dampened volatility. Despite being priced at the time in 2019 above prevailing price outlooks, the contract is expected to save customers over $300 million this year, including $190 million year to date, in addition to the $200 million in savings to customers last year. Based on current forward curves, the contract is expected to save customers in Connecticut over $900 million over the 10-year life. We remain focused on achieving a constructive outcome for the facility, which has delivered tremendous value and produced bill reductions for customers in Connecticut through its existing contract. We will continue to provide updates as things develop. With that, let me summarize our remarks on slide 13 by reiterating our focus on our three top priorities. consistently achieving our financial commitments, continued achievement of major construction milestones for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, and achieving constructive regulatory outcomes that demonstrate our ability to work cooperatively with regulators and stakeholders to deliver results that benefit both customers and shareholders.

Ask a question at this time. Please press star one now. And our first question comes from Nick Campanella with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you. Maybe just on the offshore wind timeline, you know, just part of this seems to be getting a better sense of your sequencing and installing the turbines, which you're just kind of repeating now. But just how would you kind of frame risk of further slippage? Are there any ongoing activities, I guess, that you're going to get new data on that should be monitored? And just what kind of informs confidence that year end 27 is the right date now? Thank you.

Yeah, that's a great question, Nick. And the short answer is I'm confident in the updated timeline. But let me take a step back. The strategic value of CVAO hasn't changed. It remains one of the fastest ways to bring a lot of power to our customers. And it also remains one of the most affordable sources of energy for customers. And the financial plan, as we outlined, remains durable and resilient as we finish construction. But there are really two ways to think about progress and de-risking. are largely the same. You don't have final completion, you don't have power, but CVAL is different. As I mentioned, we already have more than 450 megawatts on the grid. That's comparable to a sizable generating unit. It's also different from a regulatory recovery perspective. This isn't a project where the entire asset waits on one final COD event. We expect approximately half of project investment adjusted for network upgrade costs to be in service by the end of the year. So that's also a very meaningful de-risking milestone. So as we think about the schedule on remaining work, we continue to get better. Our most recent reload of towers, nacelles, and blades at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal was our fastest we've had so far. We're continuing to refine our jack-up times, our sequencing, our installation, our execution. Once we're jacked up, the installation process continues to get better. That's the same learning curve we've seen elsewhere on the project, whether it was monopiles or transition pieces. Now, at the same time, the updated schedule reflects what we have learned based on actual loadout timing in Portsmouth. We've added cushion for weather and vessel maintenance contingency, and we now have added some longer jacking durations at certain and more challenging locations. So it's not a theoretical schedule. It's based on experience, which is what we said we would base it on on prior calls. So the way I would summarize it is this way. The final turbine date has moved, but the project has been substantially de-risked. CVAO is already producing power. It's already benefiting customers. It's already supporting regulatory recovery. We don't have to wait until the last turbine is installed at the end of 2027 to see the value of this project. We can see it now.

Thank you. All fair points. Appreciate that. and then maybe just move into the merger. It's great to see the documents got filed at the respective regulators. I know there have been some headlines in Virginia that they'd like certain folks would like to see a more extended time period for review. But to your point in the prepares, the procedural schedule has been set. So just your expectation that the procedural schedule stays as is and just any data points you would highlight there. Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, I would echo what John said on next Sarah's call. The conversations that we've had with stakeholders thus far have gone well. As to the specific timeline and the discussion that you mentioned, you know, worth noting that at a June meeting of the Energy Commission of Virginia, The FCC staff indicated the FCC is used to working with statutory deadlines, and they did not, when directly asked, didn't indicate they needed more time or more resources. We also happen to believe the current timeframe is sufficient, particularly when you look at the level of expertise on the Virginia Commission and the Virginia staff. They've done mergers before. They're used to working in these kind of timelines. They handle rate cases of great complexity with statutory timelines all the time. So when we look at it that way, we think that the schedule that has been set forward makes a lot of sense, and we don't think it makes a lot of sense to change the rules in the middle of the game.

All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for your question. Our next question comes from Paul Zimbardo with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, team. Thank you.

Good morning, Paul.

Thank you. The first I was going to ask, there was another report in Virginia just around a grid disruption, some of the data centers turning on their backups, voltage or otherwise on the transmission line. Do you see a need to kind of incrementally strengthen the system with a transmission storage or elsewhere just as you have a very critical, the most critical infrastructure in the U.S. in your service structure? Any change you see coming out of these events?

Yeah. Hey, Paul, it's a great question at a high level. I'll answer that and then turn it over to Ed Bain, who is our EVP of utilities. The high level is that this event is one that our planners handled very well, our system operators handled very well, worked with PJM, but we can always learn. And to the sort of broader question that you asked before Ed gets into a little more of the specifics, We've been working very hard to upgrade the transmission system for some time. We feel like we're as good as anyone at operating a transmission system with these kinds of large loads. We have more experience than anyone else. We've been investing heavily as you are aware in the transmission system over the years, including some very specific projects in that part of our territory in the last few years. So we'll keep that up. We'll keep learning from this event. But, Ed, is there anything you want to sort of talk about specifically on that?

Yeah, so, Paul, you're right. We did have a transmission line that experienced a fault last week that did go out of service. And these are rare on our reliable grid, but they do occasionally occur. and we do expect typically the data centers would ride through these momentary events without shifting the backup power, but they didn't in this case. And as Bob mentioned, we have and will continue to collaborate closely with these customers to identify other mitigation opportunities. We've been sharing information and will continue to do so and implement lessons learned. We don't feel like there's significant investments that need to be made because we've been doing that in the grid, but we do believe there will continue to be other mitigating items that we'll implement.

Okay, great. And then somewhat related, but just on the battery investment, the mandate by legislature this year, any timeline or incremental color that you can give on when we should start seeing and more proposals to meet those needs.

Yeah, Paul, similar to what we shared on the last call, the legislation calls for an acceleration and an increase in the target. And we're in the process now of ramping up. As I mentioned, we have $2 billion in the current five-year forecast represents about 3% of the total five-year capital plan. The two sort of milestones I'd point you to to think about is there will be a technical conference this fall where we'll go through It'll be sponsored by the Commission permitting and feasibility technical analyses around the ability for us to deploy battery more quickly. And then in the IRP that will come out, we'll incorporate our latest perspectives and views on our ability to accelerate on the battery side. But I think as we mentioned in the last call, we would expect, given the policy, that that's going to require that we're going to need to ramp up more quickly. And that means developing additional development expertise and building a pipeline for supply chain as well as building sort of a pipeline of developers much the same way we did on the solar side when we ramped up after the Virginia Clean Economy Act was passed. Okay.

Thank you, Tim. Thanks, Paul.

Thank you for your question. Our next question comes from Carly Davenport with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Just to start a follow-up on the turbine installation, are you able to expand a bit more on where you see the most opportunity for efficiency in the timeline, just with the reduction in the days per turbine that's sort of embedded in the new target relative to where you've trended over the last couple of earnings calls?

Yeah, Carly, I mean, I think we laid it out, but the areas that we would be looking for would be quicker turnarounds at Portsmouth when we're in reloading. And as I mentioned, the turnaround this past weekend was the fastest one that we've had so far. And then the ability to jack the vessel up and jack the vessel down faster as we get into the more challenging locations. Those would be probably the two places that we would look the most to try to continue to pick up pace. And as we've experienced throughout the project, as we do these iterations more times, we tend to get faster and more efficient.

Great. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. And then the follow-up, you had mentioned the proposed Mount Storm combined cycle plant. just to confirm that would be incremental to the base capital plan just want to make sure that's accurate and then it seems like there's growing focus on West Virginia you know with the state's focus on building out incremental data center capacity there so just anything you could share on you know other opportunities you might see there and just how we should think about the timing and path to regulatory filings.

Carly I'll take the first half and Bob you can speak to the second but Carly this is this is not an incremental project to the current capital plan We had outlined an acceleration of capital towards the back end of our plan driven by some of these natural gas investments. And if you look at the most recent IRP, it actually sort of continues into the early 30s as well, where we project a continued build out of these resources to support the reliable service to our customers.

And Carly, as to the second part, the focus on West Virginia is certainly not new for us. We've been operating the Mount Storm Power Station there for decades. That's been a really important workhorse of our fleet and continues to be. But we saw the opportunity to support our regulated footprint and the generation needed to serve growing demand that we've been describing for some time. We have the available property there. We can get gas there. And so it's a great opportunity for us to help our BUILD program that we need to serve our regulated customers, which is our focus.

Great. Thank you for the caller. Thank you for your question. This concludes our question and answer session. So I'll turn it back to Bob Blue for closing remarks.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to join the call today and enjoy the rest of the day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.