Hey there, bargain hunter.

This morning, two of America’s largest power companies made it official. NextEra Energy is acquiring Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $67 billion — creating what the companies themselves are calling the world’s largest regulated electric utility by market capitalization. This is not a rumor. Both boards approved it. The SEC filings are live. Dominion shares jumped more than 14% before the market open on Monday.

What Actually Happened

The deal was signed May 15, 2026, announced publicly May 18. Under the terms, each Dominion shareholder receives 0.8138 shares of NextEra common stock plus a pro-rata share of a one-time $360 million cash pool. NextEra shareholders will own 74.5% of the combined company; Dominion holders get 25.5%. NextEra CEO John Ketchum stays on as chairman and CEO of the combined entity, which will trade under the existing NEE ticker on the NYSE.

The combined company will serve approximately 10 million utility customer accounts across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and will own 110 gigawatts of generation from a wide mix of energy sources. Dominion customers in those three states are being offered $2.25 billion in electric bill credits spread over two years post-close — a regulatory sweetener that will matter enormously when this deal lands in front of state utility commissions.

Closing is expected in 12 to 18 months. It still needs NextEra and Dominion shareholder votes, HSR clearance, FERC approval, Nuclear Regulatory Commission sign-off, and individual state utility commission approvals. The termination fee structure tells you how serious both sides are: Dominion owes NextEra $2.24 billion if it walks, and NextEra owes Dominion up to $6.52 billion in a reciprocal scenario — or $4.83 billion if specific regulatory conditions fail.

Why This Deal Exists

Virginia. That’s the short answer.

Dominion serves roughly 3.6 million electric customers in Virginia and the Carolinas — and Virginia happens to be home to what many call “data center alley,” one of the most concentrated data center corridors anywhere on earth. In 2023 alone, data centers consumed about 26% of Virginia’s total electricity supply. That number is still climbing. The IEA confirmed that electricity demand from data centers soared 17% globally in 2025, and consumption from AI-focused facilities climbed even faster. The IEA’s base case projects that overall data center electricity consumption will double by 2030.

Dominion’s own 2024 resource plan projected nearly 27 gigawatts of new generation needed by 2039 — 21 GW of it from renewables and nuclear, and 5.9 GW from natural gas — almost entirely driven by data center load growth. PJM, the regional grid operator covering Virginia and much of the mid-Atlantic, projected 32 gigawatts of peak load growth between 2024 and 2030, with data centers responsible for 94% of it. The grid stress is real. In the PJM capacity market, clearing prices for the 2026–2027 delivery year had already jumped to $329.17/MW — compared to $28.92/MW just two delivery years prior.

NextEra, which already holds a market cap of roughly $195 billion and operates Florida Power & Light serving 6 million customers, has spent years building out renewables, battery storage, and nuclear restart projects. The Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa — being restarted with more than $800 million in investment — is already under a power agreement with Google. The fit with Dominion is not subtle: NextEra brings the capital efficiency and clean energy execution, Dominion brings the load. As one energy industry observer put it, dropping NextEra’s storage expertise onto Virginia’s data center load base could be genuinely transformative.

The Numbers That Matter

• Deal equity value: ~$67 billion (all-stock plus $360M cash pool)
• Combined enterprise value: ~$419 billion including debt
• Combined generation capacity: 110 gigawatts
• Combined customer accounts: ~10 million
• Target adjusted EPS growth: 9%+ per year through 2032
• Regulatory capital growth target: 11% per year, 2025–2032
• Dominion termination fee: $2.24 billion
• NextEra reverse termination fee: up to $6.52 billion
• Customer bill credits proposed: $2.25 billion over two years
• Expected close: 12–18 months

The Risk Side

Scale at this level comes with friction. The regulatory gauntlet here is long — multiple federal agencies, the NRC, and several state commissions, some of which are not historically friendly to large utility consolidations. Virginia regulators in particular have been under increasing pressure from lawmakers and consumer advocates around data center cost allocation. Dominion already proposed its first base-rate increase since 1992 earlier this year, adding roughly $8.51 per month for a typical Virginia household in 2026.

There is also a real question about the pace of the underlying demand itself. New data center deal activity fell more than 40% between Q3 and Q4 of 2025, and some analysts suggest hyperscaler capex could soften meaningfully in 2026. The demand thesis is intact — but the timing is not perfectly linear, and a utility merger of this size will be priced to perfection before it closes.

Worth noting: NextEra’s stock dipped slightly on the announcement. That is a fairly common reaction in all-stock acquisitions — the acquirer’s shareholders absorb dilution, and the market wants to see the synergy math hold up over time. Dominion’s 14% pre-market jump is the clearer signal of where the market sees the value transfer going.

Cheap Investor Scorecard

• Regulatory approval timeline: Watch state-by-state commission filings closely — Virginia is the key variable
• EPS growth delivery: Management targeting 9%+ annually through 2032; hold them to it
• Dominion load growth: Track PJM interconnection queue data for Virginia as a real-time demand proxy
• NEE dilution absorption: Monitor NextEra’s share count and free cash flow per share post-announcement
• Bill credit execution: $2.25 billion in credits needs to survive the regulatory process intact
• Data center capex from hyperscalers: Any significant pullback in Amazon, Microsoft, or Google infrastructure spend changes the demand math
• Nuclear restart progress: Duane Arnold timeline and any updates on SMR pipeline under the combined entity

The bottom line is fairly direct. If this deal clears its regulatory hurdles — which is a real if, given the scope — the combined NextEra–Dominion entity becomes the dominant infrastructure answer to AI’s electricity problem on the East Coast. The 9% EPS growth target through 2032 is credible given the demand backdrop, but the stock needs to hold its valuation discipline through a messy 12-to-18-month approval process. If you own NEE, this is a hold with a long runway. If you are watching from the sideline, the regulatory discount that may emerge between now and close could be the more interesting entry point.

The grid didn’t wait for permission to get complicated. Neither should your research.

– The Cheap Investor