Dominion Energy: A Discounted Utility With A Premium Yield

D is one of the cleaner ways to express a long-duration “power demand + regulated asset” trade without paying up for the most exposed merchant generators. The market should increasingly view its capital plan as an option on load growth: AI/data center demand does not just lift near-term earnings, it lowers the risk that new wires, substations, and gas infrastructure are stranded, which can compress regulatory friction and accelerate rate-base expansion over multiple rate cases.

The second-order winner is the supply chain behind utility buildouts: EPC contractors, transformer and switchgear suppliers, and gas infrastructure vendors should see better utilization and pricing power as utilities rush to secure equipment with long lead times. The loser set is any high-beta independent power or merchant utility that has been trading on scarcity pricing alone; if regulated utilities can monetize incremental load through approved capex, some of the “AI power premium” migrates from generation into transmission/distribution.

The key risk is that the market is likely already partially pricing the story, while the earnings translation is slow. Data center load announcements are immediate, but rate recovery is a 12-36 month process and can be diluted by filing delays, political pushback, or cost overruns; that gap creates a window where headlines are bullish but FCF and ROE expansion lag. A reversal would come from lower PJM pricing, a slowdown in hyperscaler capex, or a regulatory ruling that reduces allowed returns just as capex peaks.

Contrarian takeaway: consensus may be underestimating the quality of the growth because utilities usually get treated as slow, but the combination of visible capital deployment and rising load is unusually supportive for a regulated name. The move is probably not “cheap” on headline multiples, but it may still be under-owned as a structural growth asset within utilities, especially versus peers without credible incremental demand catalysts.