Robert M. Blue
Our OSHA recordable rate of 0.26 in 2025 was a record for the company, continuing the positive trend from the last three years. We also broke a record with our company's lowest lost day restricted duty rate, which is a safety metric that tends to reflect more serious injuries. But we know that safety is ultimately about people, not numbers. Continuing to focus relentlessly on improving our safety performance is one way we can honor the memory of our colleague, Ryan Barwick, who we lost in an accident last year. I will start our business update with the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. Notably, we are now over 70% complete. We continue to be on track for the delivery of first power to the grid by March. That will represent a remarkable project milestone. General fabrication and installation have gone exceptionally well. Let me provide a few quick examples. We completed installation of the 176 monopiles more quickly than expected. We are ahead of schedule on transition pieces as well, with over 70% installed and the remainder at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal. The third and final offshore substation was installed this past Saturday. Commissioning is proceeding as planned. Inter-array cable installation is on track. Deepwater export cables are now installed and inter-array cable fabrication is complete. All of the remaining cabling is now fabricated, and a majority is landed in Virginia. And onshore work to accept first power is complete. The project budget stands at $11.5 billion, including unused contingency of $155 million. On January 30, we filed our quarterly status report with the State Corporation Commission as well as provided a comprehensive and detailed update on the project's cost and timeline on our Investor Relations website. No change to those materials, we have included them in the appendix of today's material. We have continued to provide an update to our potential tariff exposure across discrete tariff categories and illustrative durations. We are showing the impact of country-specific tariffs through March 2026, and the impact of steel tariffs through completion of project construction in early 2027. Please note, we are reviewing Friday's Supreme Court tariff ruling. We will update the budget in the future as appropriate. Finally, let me talk about wind turbine generator progress and timing. We are making excellent progress on fabrication. Around 70% of towers and nacelles and 30% of blades have been fabricated. This progress tracks well relative to our schedule. With regard to installation, a few comments. First, successful completion of the first turbine in January marked a major milestone for CVOW as we demonstrated our ability to safely complete each of the major elements of the overall project. Second, during the first few iterations, we are deliberately moving more slowly in order to ensure we figuratively measure twice and cut once. We view this as prudent construction management, aligned with the lessons we have learned over years of large project construction. Third, since we recommenced turbine installation upon receipt of the preliminary injunction on January 16, we have been navigating winter weather, which has accounted for over a week of downtime. Fourth, we needed to pause installation occasionally to refine procedures and equipment as is typical during first-time stages of any construction project. Let me provide one meaningful example. After successfully installing the third blade of the first turbine, a human performance error, which was unrelated to Charybdis operations, resulted in damage to the affixed blade. That required us to assess the damage, remove the blade, replace it with a new blade, and immediately return to port to offload the damaged blade and reload a new one. That iteration took almost two weeks. We will, of course, learn from this experience, and do not expect to see this type of delay repeat itself. Therefore, I would simply caution against making any conclusive predictions on the project's expected timeline solely based on the first iterations of this process. Please note that current project budget includes turbine installation schedule contingency for weather delays through July 2027 as needed, including Charybdis charter costs. As a general rule of thumb, if the project extends beyond that for some reason, and we do not expect it will, we estimate that each additional quarter to complete turbine installation would add between $150 million and $200 million to the project cost, a portion of which would be allocated to our financing partner. We will include data from additional installation iterations in future quarterly updates. Turning to slide 16. As Steven previewed, we view customer affordability as central to our public service obligation. And, accordingly, we have a long record of maintaining competitive rates which compare favorably to the national average. Our current customer rates at both DEV and DESC continue to be lower than the national average, 4% and 12%, respectively. And going forward, we expect to see typical residential rates increasing by a compound annual growth rate of around 2.6%–2.8% at DEV and DESC, respectively. Additionally, as shown on slide 17, DEV and DESC's average residential electric customer bills as a percentage of median household income have improved by 7% and 29% more than the national utility average, respectively, since 2014. We recognize, though, that customers are feeling the pressure of higher costs for housing, groceries, and other essentials, including their electric bill. We have a number of programs designed to help our customers manage their electric bill including budget billing, energy savings programs, and financial assistance programs such as EnergyShare. Late last year, we also launched a new online platform to put all of our programs in one place so customers can more easily find the best options to meet their needs. Furthermore, our recently approved large load provisions ensure that our smaller customers are not at risk of subsidizing our largest customer classes. We also work continuously to improve the efficiency of our operations while meeting high customer service standards and reliability needs. In recent years, we have driven out cost through improved processes, innovative use of technology, and other best practice initiatives. As shown on slide 18, based on the most recent data filed with FERC, we have a proven track record of being one of the most efficient companies for the benefit of our customers in the industry. We are focused on continuing to drive down O&M costs across all of our segments. Looking ahead, we are intently focused on ensuring our service is not just reliable, but that it remains affordable as well. Now we will turn to business updates. Steven provided a brief overview of sales growth trends. Let me offer some specific comments on our data center customers. On slide 19, we have updated our typical disclosure around the data center pipeline. We now have over 48 gigawatts in various stages of contracting as of December 2025, which compares to around 47 gigawatts as of September, an increase of approximately 1.4 gigawatts or 3%. As a reminder, these contracts are broken into substation engineering letters of authorization, construction letters of authorization, and electrical service agreements. As customers move from the first to the last, the cost commitment and obligation by the customer increase. Starting in January 2027, large load customers with demand of 25 megawatts or greater will be subject to minimum demand charges. And a customer that signs a new ESA will also be subject to firm contract terms with exit fees and enhanced collateral requirements. We believe that we have a differentiated opportunity around our data center customers. Our projected demand growth is high quality, as shown on slide 20, because the forecasts that drive our planned capital spend are based on insights gained from over a decade of meter-level historical data, long-term working relationships with some of the largest and most sophisticated technology companies in the world, and validation from 20-plus gigawatts of signed ESA and CLOA contracts. The vast majority of our demand growth is driven by steady and consistent batches of cloud and inference data center modules, which we view as lower risk and produce consistent results over time. This strategy has worked well for us for years and helps limit our reliance on any single project or customer. Let me spend a few minutes on slide 21 because I want to make sure everyone understands its significance. As the slide shows, our forecasted data center demand through 2045 is more than covered by existing signed ESAs and CLOAs. That means we do not forecast demand based on SELOAs. That also means that by working diligently through the existing backlog and connecting the existing projects under construction, we would achieve our demand forecast for the next approximately twenty years. Again, we believe this makes our data center market less risky and highly realistic. All that said, we are, of course, working as quickly as possible to work through our queue because we know these investments are of vital importance to our data center customers. We welcome them to our system and recognize the important contribution they make to national, state, and community success. We are developing resources across distribution, transmission, and generation to ensure we meet this critical need on a timely basis, while also taking active steps to safeguard all of our customers from the risk of paying more than their fair share for reliable and affordable electric service. In Virginia specifically, residential rates have averaged 9% below the national average, even as data center load has grown at a 20% CAGR since 2016, as shown on slide 22. Data center demand should and can be a win-win for our state, our customers, and our company. And while just one data point, it is worth noting that for the ninth consecutive year, our economic development team has been recognized as a top utility for economic development. Two projects were highlighted, including Eli Lilly and Hampton Lumber. In September 2025, Eli Lilly and Company announced plans for a $5 billion state-of-the-art manufacturing facility that will generate 650 high-wage jobs and 1,800 construction jobs in Virginia. In addition, Allendale, South Carolina welcomed Hampton Lumber in July, when the company established its first East Coast sawmill, bringing more than 125 new jobs to the region. We are proud to contribute to these outcomes. Projects we supported in the last year alone will create more than 3,600 jobs and attract $7.4 billion in new capital investment, delivering lasting value and strong community growth across our service territory. Finally, let me share a few additional business updates as shown on slide 23. First, on November 25, the Virginia State Corporation Commission published its final order in the 2025 biennial review proceeding. The Commission's order approved the large load provisions I discussed earlier, designed to ensure continued fair allocation of costs among customers to mitigate the risk of stranded assets. Also on November 25, the Virginia SEC approved the certificate of public convenience and necessity and rider for the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center, an approximately one-gigawatt gas-fired electric generating facility expected to cost approximately $1.5 billion and be placed in service in 2029. In its order, the Commission highlighted that the project addresses an imminent reliability threat in accordance with the public interest. On February 12, the Commission affirmed their order and denied a petition for reconsideration. On February 13, PJM announced its final selections in the latest transmission open window process, awarding us a portfolio of projects totaling over $5 billion with various in-service dates through 2032. This represents the largest proposed investment by Dominion Energy Virginia since PJM began its open window process. Next, in South Carolina, DESC filed a rate case application and testimony with the Public Service Commission of South Carolina on January 2 to support the $1.4 billion invested in the South Carolina electric system since 2023 and ensure that we can continue meeting customer demand safely, reliably, and efficiently. We expect a decision in June with rates effective in July. Finally, on Millstone, the facility continues to provide over 90% of Connecticut's carbon-free electricity, and 55% of its output is under a fixed-price contract through late 2029. The remaining output continues to be significantly derisked by our hedging program, which we have updated in the appendix of today's materials. During 2025, Millstone performed well and achieved a capacity factor of over 91%, aligning with our expectations of exemplary performance, and reflecting our unwavering commitment to safety and best-in-class operations. In January, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection issued a zero-carbon energy request for proposals for which Millstone is eligible. Bids are due in the RFP in March. Now the Connecticut RFP process also intends to coordinate bid evaluation in conjunction with other New England states. In addition to state-sponsored procurement, we continue to evaluate the prospect of supporting incremental data center activity as well. We feel strongly that any data center option needs to be pursued in a collaborative fashion with stakeholders in Connecticut. We remain focused on achieving a constructive outcome for the facility, and we will continue to provide updates as things develop. With that, let me summarize our remarks on slide 24. We achieved record-setting safety performance as measured by both OSHA and LDRD rates last year. We achieved 2025 operating earnings above the midpoint of our guidance and delivered our strongest credit results in the last several years. We initiated our 2026 operating earnings guidance range and reaffirmed our existing long-term operating earnings per share growth rate of 5% to 7%, with a bias to the upper half of that range 2028 to 2030. We reaffirmed our credit and dividend guidance. In collaboration with our policymakers, regulators, and stakeholders, we continue to make the necessary investments to provide the reliable, affordable, increasingly clean energy that powers our customers every day, which has resulted in an approximately 30% increase in our five-year capital plan. And CVOW continues to progress well in construction with robust cost sharing that protects customers and shareholders. We are 100% focused on execution. We know we must continue to deliver and we will. With that, we are ready to take your questions.