Company: SOJE
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form Type: PRE 14A
Source: 0000092122-25-000032
Chunk: 96

Company: SOUTHERN CO
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form: PRE 14A
Chunk 96
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 Alcoa, Waste Management, Goldman Sachs, FirstEnergy and Macy's. These votes would have been higher than 74% to 88% if more shareholders had access to independent proxy voting advice. This proposal topic recived [sic] 98% support each in 2024 at Domino's Pizza, FMC Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Masco Corporation and Power Integrations.

This proposal topic won impressive 98% support at the 2024 Southern Company annual shareholder meeting. This was even greater support than most of the Directors received. It was also greater support than the auditors received and greater support than the executive pay vote received.

Please vote yes:

#### Simple Majority Vote -- Proposal 5

#### Board’s Recommendation and Statement
The Board has carefully considered this proposal and recommends that you vote AGAINST the proposal for the reasons described below.

Southern’s own proposal in Item 4 will eliminate the only remaining supermajority voting requirement in our governing documents, rendering this proposal unnecessary.

While the proposal’s language is not entirely precise, our understanding is that the proposal is seeking to eliminate the only remaining supermajority voting requirement in our governing documents, which is set forth in Article Eleventh of the Certificate. As described in Item 4, our governing documents contain only one supermajority voting requirement, Article Eleventh of the Certificate. Our By-Laws do not contain any supermajority voting requirements.

#### 84Southern Company2025 Proxy Statement

#### Stockholder Proposals
As described in Item 4, the Board cannot unilaterally remove the supermajority voting requirement from our Certificate as Delaware law also requires stockholders’ approval. For this reason, at seven stockholder meetings in the last 12 years (2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024), the Board recommended that stockholders approve an amendment to our Certificate to eliminate the last remaining supermajority voting requirement in our organizational documents. Each time, the proposed amendment received strong stockholder support but failed to receive the required vote of two-thirds of our outstanding shares.

The Board and management have consistently worked to eliminate this last remaining supermajority voting requirement, including engaging a leading third-party proxy solicitor to assist with stockholder turnout. We believe the primary reason we have not received the required affirmative vote of 66 2/3% of outstanding shares is due to our large retail stockholder base, which typically returns a lower proportion of proxies than the Company’s