Duke Beefs Up Florida Capex Plans, Sells Stake to Brookfield
Duke Energy Corp. executives have significantly added to their Florida capital spending plans for later this decade and will partly fund those with proceeds from one of two recent assets sales agreements that are worth nearly $8.5 billion combined.
Duke Energy Florida serves 2 million of Charlotte-based Duke’s 8.6 million electric customers across six states and had been slated to receive about $12 billion in capital investment from the beginning of this year through 2029. President and CEO Harry Sideris and his team have now lifted that figure by $4 billion and will pay for half of that amount with some of the $6 billion they’ll collect by selling 19.7% of Duke Energy Florida to infrastructure giant Brookfield Asset Management.
The Brookfield agreement is structured to have the investment firm buy into Duke Energy Florida in phases, with the first — worth $2.8 billion — happening early next year. The companies expect that Brookfield will invest another $200 million by the end of 2026 and then put to work $2 billion in 2027 and the remaining $1 billion in the year after.
Speaking to analysts on Aug. 5 after reporting Duke’s second-quarter results, Sideris said the incremental $4 billion in spending will occur in 2028 and 2029, when Duke Energy Florida will transition to a new multiyear rate plan.
“There’ll be grid investments, generation investments, ways to serve our customers better and handle the growth that Florida is experiencing,” he added.
The forecasted Florida bump grows Duke’s total capex plan through 2029 to $87 billion. Executives are forecasting that the company’s load growth will accelerate to an annual rate of 3% to 4% starting in 2027 versus today’s rate of 1.5% to 2%.
During the three months that ended June 30, Duke produced a net profit of just over $1.0 billion compared to $921 million in the same period of 2024. Total operating revenues climbed to $7.5 billion from nearly $7.2 billion even though total electric sales dipped about 1%. Duke’s overall customer base grew 1.5% from mid-2024, although its industrial client count fell nearly 4%.
Shares of Duke (Ticker: DUK) were changing hands around $125.60 in morning trading Aug. 8 and were on track to finish the week up about 2%. Over the past six months, they have climbed nearly 10%, growing the company’s market capitalization to about $98 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications T&D World, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner and Oil & Gas Journal. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.