“Accordingly, we would expect to fund incremental capital investments above our current plan with approximately 30% to 40% equity or equity equivalents.”

In context

“usiness in a credit-supportive manner, preserving our investment-grade credit ratings continues to be a priority. As we believe that to be a high-quality equity investment, a company must also be a high-quality credit. Our base plan projects average annual equity needs of approximately $800 million a year to support our credit quality and our progress toward our credit metric target of approximately 17% FFO to debt by the latter part of our forecast horizon. These equity needs should be easily manageable within -- with our internal plans, which provide approximately $350 million to $400 million annually plus our at the market or ATM program. To the extent incremental capital opportunities become part of our base capital investment plan, our credit quality objectives would remain the same. Accordingly, we would expect to fund incremental capital investments above our current plan with approximately 30% to 40% equity or equity equivalents. We expect to continue to be flexible and to use the same shareholder-focused discipline we have demonstrated historically when it comes to sourcing, incremental equity or equity equivalents. Since our last earnings call, we've already addressed roughly $500 million of equity needs for 2025 by pricing ATM sales under forward contracts and through the issuance of junior subordinated notes or JSNs which received 50% equity treatment by the credit rating agencies. For decades, our dividend has been an integral part of our value proposition for shareholders. Southern Company has paid a dividend that is equal to or greater than the previous year for 77 consecutive years with consecutive increases over each of the last 23 years. While future dividend increases are subject to approval by our Boar”