Company: SOJE
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000092122-25-000018
Chunk: 1737

Company: SOUTHERN CO
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 8
Chunk 1737
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. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits, we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (i) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (ii) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates. 

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    Table of Contents                                Index to Financial Statements

Postretirement Benefits Plan – Fair Value of Investments Measured at Net Asset Value

As discussed in Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements, the fair value of postretirement benefits plan assets on December 31, 2024, was $71 million. Of this amount, $70 million represents the fair value of investments measured at net asset value (NAV).

We identified the assessment of the postretirement benefits plan fair value of investments measured at NAV as a critical audit matter. Subjective auditor judgment was required in the application and performance of procedures to assess the fair value of the investments measured at NAV because the determination involved the use of unobservable inputs. Additionally, specialized skills and knowledge were required to assess the fair value of the investments measured at NAV and to assess the sufficiency of audit evidence obtained. 

The primary procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter included:

•Comparing the fair values as recorded by the Company to