Company: SOJE
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000092122-25-000018
Chunk: 3449

Company: SOUTHERN CO
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 3449
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 its sale in September 2023. See Note 15 to the financial statements under "Southern Company Gas" for additional information.

FUTURE EARNINGS POTENTIAL

General

Prices for electric service provided by the traditional electric operating companies and natural gas distribution service provided by the natural gas distribution utilities to retail customers are set by state PSCs or other applicable state regulatory agencies under cost-based regulatory principles. Retail rates and earnings are reviewed through various regulatory mechanisms and/or processes and may be adjusted periodically within certain limitations. Effectively operating pursuant to these regulatory mechanisms and/or processes and appropriately balancing required costs and capital expenditures with customer prices will continue to challenge the traditional electric operating companies and the natural gas distribution utilities for the foreseeable future. Prices for wholesale electricity sales, interconnecting transmission lines, and the exchange of electric power are regulated by the FERC. Southern Power continues to focus on long-term PPAs. See ACCOUNTING POLICIES – "Application of Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates – Utility Regulation" herein and Note 2 to the financial statements for additional information about regulatory matters.

Each Registrant's results of operations are not necessarily indicative of its future earnings potential. The level of the Registrants' future earnings depends on numerous factors that affect the opportunities, challenges, and risks of the Registrants' primary businesses of selling electricity and/or distributing natural gas, as described further herein. The Registrants are unable to predict changes in law, regulations, regulatory guidance, legal interpretations, policy positions, and implementation actions that may result from the change in presidential administrations.

For the traditional electric operating companies, these factors include the ability to maintain constructive regulatory environments that allow for the timely recovery of prudently-incurred costs during a time of increasing costs, including those related to projected long-term demand growth, stringent environmental standards, including CCR rules, safety, system reliability and resiliency, fuel, restoration following major storms, and capital expenditures, including constructing new electric generating plants, extending the retirement dates of certain fossil fuel plants, and expanding and improving the transmission and distribution systems; continued customer growth; and the trends of an uncertain inflationary environment and reduced electricity usage per customer, especially in residential and commercial markets.

Earnings in the electricity business will also depend upon maintaining and growing sales and pricing of large customers such that incremental costs are met with adequate incremental revenues, considering, among other things, recent trends driving projected growth in electricity consumption including the increasing digitization of the economy and growth in data centers, an increase in industrial activity in the Southern Company system's electric service territory