DUK

Duke is doing exactly what a well-run regulated utility should: FY2025 revenue grew 5.6% to $31.7B, net income rose 9.8% to $4.97B, and diluted EPS climbed 10.5% to $6.31, recovering cleanly from the $2.55B net-income trough in FY2022. Operating margin of 27.2% and an 8.8% rise in operating income show the rate base is earning consistently, and the multi-year revenue ramp ($24.5B→$31.7B since FY2021) reflects a constructive regulatory backdrop. ROE of 9.6%, however, is the tell: this is a low-double-digit-return business by design, not a high-compounder, so the investment case rests on durability and the dividend rather than outsized growth.

The balance sheet is the central tension. The company is in a heavy build cycle — capex of $14.0B (+14.2%) now exceeds operating cash flow of $12.3B (flat YoY), so free cash flow is negative and the gap is plugged with debt. Long-term debt sits at $80.1B (1.5x equity of $51.8B) and the current portion of debt jumped 63.3% to $7.1B against just $245M of cash and a current ratio near 0.55. That is typical for a capital-intensive utility, but it makes DUK highly sensitive to interest rates and to regulators granting timely cost recovery on its modernization and storm-hardening spend. The 10-K leans on nuclear as the linchpin of both reliability and decarbonization, flagging that the 11 reactors at six stations need NRC relicensing and that the economics depend on nuclear production tax credits under the IRA/OBBBA surviving intact — a real policy/regulatory dependency, not boilerplate.