Dominion Energy (D +0.57%) has undergone a major transformation over the past decade. The energy company has invested heavily in expanding its regulated utility operations to capitalize on growing power demand across the Southeast. Meanwhile, it has sold off several other energy businesses to help pay for these investments.
Here's a look at how much value the company's investment strategy has generated for shareholders over the past decade.
NYSE: D
Key Data Points
Ten years ago, Dominion Energy was one of the largest producers and transporters of energy. It had a diversified portfolio of power generation assets, natural gas infrastructure, and utilities. The company invested heavily in expanding its businesses, positioning it to grow its earnings and dividends at healthy rates for a utility.
Because of that, investing $10,000 at the time would have seemed like a safe bet to produce a solid total return. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. That investment would only be worth about $7,300 today. On a slightly more positive note, adding reinvested dividends would have pushed the total return to $11,150. That's still a rather anemic 1.1% annualized total return.
A big issue has been a dramatic strategy change. Dominion was building one of the country's largest electric and natural gas energy companies. It made multibillion-dollar acquisitions of Quester (2016) and SCANA (2018) to accelerate its expansion.
However, it overextended itself, which caused the company to sell off several assets to repay debt. It sold off much of its gas transmission and storage assets to Berkshire Hathaway in 2020, the Questar Pipeline to Southwest Gas the following year, and jettisoned several of its gas utilities (including the remainder of Questar) in a deal with Enbridge in 2023. As a result of these sales and the dramatic impact they had on its earnings, Dominion cut its dividend by 33% in 2020 to retain additional cash to reduce debt and invest in growing its electric utility businesses.
That poor performance shows that investing heavily in growth doesn't always pay off. A company must avoid expanding too fast and overextending itself if it wants to grow shareholder value.
