管理層發言
Good afternoon. My name is Robert, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Southern Company Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Greg MacLeod, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Robert. Good afternoon, and welcome to Southern Company's fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me today are Chris Womack, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Southern Company, and Dan Tucker, Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind you that we will make forward-looking statements today in addition to providing historical information. Various important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, including those discussed in our Form 10-K and subsequent securities filings. In addition, we will present non-GAAP financial information on this call. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measure are included in the financial information we released this morning as well as the slides for this conference call, which are both available on our Investor Relations website. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Chris.
Thank you, Greg. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. 2024 was an outstanding year for Southern Company, both operationally and financially. We achieved adjusted earnings at the very top of our EPS guidance range, which represents 11% growth from our 2023 adjusted results. All of our business units executed on their plans and delivered exceptional value to our customers and investors alike. I am incredibly proud of how our team continued to put customers first throughout 2024. While this is our daily mission, our dedication was especially evident as our team came together over the past year in response to several weather events, which adversely impacted many of our customers, including the most destructive storm in Georgia Power's history this past fall. Delivering clean, safe, reliable, and affordable energy to the communities and customers we are privileged to serve will remain our top priority.
Looking forward, we believe our portfolio of companies is incredibly well positioned to capitalize on significant opportunities to serve growth and improve our local economies and to sustain success over the long term. The foundation of our business model remains our state-regulated utility franchises. The tremendous value inherent in our three electric utilities and four natural gas distribution utilities is a function of our continuous focus on our 9 million customers, our constructive regulatory environments with orderly processes, and service territories with strong long-term fundamentals. Economic development activities at our utilities are robust, providing a tremendous foundation for regular, predictable, and sustainable long-term earnings growth. Over the past year, more than 150 companies either announced expanded operations or made the decision to locate new facilities in our southeastern footprint.
These projects are expected to support over 20,000 new jobs, further highlighting that the region we proudly serve is thriving. Some of the larger announcements over the past year were in the manufacturing, entertainment, chemical, and metals industries. The economic development pipeline from large electric load customers, including data centers and large manufacturers, represents over 50,000 megawatts of potential incremental load by the mid-2030s. Data centers alone represent roughly 80% of that potential load. While our disciplined approach to forecasting results and a risk-adjusted outlook for sales growth comprises only a fraction of the economic development pipeline, we are encouraged to have commitments for over 10,000 megawatts, with advanced discussions and progress for even more. We remain committed to our approach to sustainably serving this exciting growth opportunity, including pricing and contract terms designed to protect our investments and provide economic benefits back to existing customers.
We are also encouraged to see the data center momentum first observed in Georgia expanding into both Alabama and Mississippi. We recently signed contracts to serve the power needs of data centers in these two states, totaling over 1,000 megawatts. While our state-regulated utilities are expected to represent approximately 95% of our projected capital investments, we have also continued to invest in our other complementary strategically aligned businesses. Many of these businesses add depth to our vertical integration and provide us with unique market insights that help us attract and better serve customers in our regulated footprint. They also represent potential opportunities to add durability to our long-term earnings trajectory. Southern Power, our competitive power business, represents a terrific complement to our state-regulated businesses. Substantially, all assets are under long-term contracts with creditworthy counterparties, and we don't take meaningful commodity risk.
In total, Southern Power's portfolio has approximately 13,000 megawatts of capacity across 50-plus generating facilities in 15 states, including approximately 7,000 megawatts of natural gas generation, 3,000 megawatts of solar, and 3,000 megawatts of wind. Southern Power has 500 megawatts of solar currently under construction, with projected in-service dates in 2025 and 2026. We will continue to be opportunistic on new renewable energy projects that meet our stringent risk-return criteria. The burgeoning need for reliable, dispatchable natural gas capacity unlocks four significant opportunities for Southern Power. First, as contracts on our existing natural gas fleet come up for renewal beginning in the early 2030s, the low growth in the Southeast is expected to support future renewal pricing that is significantly higher than our existing contracts. Second, meaningful upgrade opportunities are being evaluated on Southern Power's legacy natural gas fleet.
These could translate into several hundred additional megawatts available to meet future market demands for capacity. Third, Southern Power has options at its existing plant sites to build new brownfield power plants in the Southeast. And lastly, Southern Power is exploring opportunities outside of the Southeast to serve data centers with new natural gas generation. We are very gratified to have developed and retained this incredibly valuable business as it represents a tremendous opportunity to support sustainable growth well into the next decade. In 2016, when Southern Company acquired what is now Southern Company Gas, we sought to further vertically integrate along the energy value chain. An important additional element of that vertical integration was our 50% investment in the Southern Natural Gas pipeline, which overlays our three electric service territories as well as one of our largest natural gas franchises.
As previously disclosed by our operating partner, Kinder Morgan, this pipeline is poised for growth, largely to support increased natural gas generation throughout the Southeast. Southern Natural Gas, as well as our other smaller FERC-related pipeline investments, provide a terrific complement to our core growth prospects. Even two of our smaller subsidiaries, both of which have seen accelerated growth recently due to expanding computing power demand, have been incredibly valuable for deeper appreciation and understanding of the current market. PowerSecure, which specializes in providing utility and energy solutions to commercial, industrial, and low-serving customers, has seen its business bolstered by the growth in data centers. This has led to a more comprehensive understanding of data center needs and has enhanced our relationships with many national data center owners. Another example of the value in our smaller complementary subsidiaries is Southern Telecom.
On its own and in partnership with our electric utilities, Southern Telecom deploys fiber optic infrastructure that serves as an important and attractive additional product offering, enhancing the appeal to data-intensive customers to locate in our southeastern service territories. Over time, we have exercised exceptional discipline and intentionality in refining our portfolio of businesses. We believe this has uniquely positioned Southern Company to deliver reliable and affordable energy to our customers as well as to deliver premier risk-adjusted total shareholder returns to our investors. Dan, I'll now turn the call over to you.
Thanks, Chris. I'm going to pause. Robert, can you hear us? Operator?
Yes, I can—very clearly.
We're being told that none of the audience can hear the audio. Okay. I just sent a message to our supervisor. Everything looks fine on my end. We'll continue. I'm getting mixed reports now. So, we'll continue, and what we'll do. I believe this is being recorded. It will be available for webcast. And hopefully, the Q&A goes as far. Thank you, Robert. Well, thanks, Chris. So, look, as you can see from the materials we released this morning, we reported strong adjusted earnings per share of $4.05 for 2024, which, as Chris mentioned earlier, was the very top of our 2024 guidance range and represents 11% growth from adjusted earnings from the prior year. The primary drivers for our performance compared to 2023 were continued investment in our state-regulated utilities and weather-related impacts. A complete reconciliation of our quarterly and annual adjusted earnings is included in the materials we released this morning.
Turning now to electricity sales. Excluding the impact of temporary sales losses due to Hurricane Helene, weather-normalized total retail electricity sales for the year were up approximately 1% compared to 2023. Commercial sales were particularly strong, led by power usage from new and existing data centers, which were up 17% year-over-year. 2024 was our strongest year on record in terms of new residential electric customers. We added 57,000 new residential electric customers as well as 26,000 new customers in our natural gas distribution businesses. These trends highlight the broad strength we continue to observe across our service territories, particularly in the Southeast. We expect this momentum to continue into 2025, with retail electricity sales on a consolidated basis projected to grow approximately 2% to 3% compared to 2024 weather-normal sales. Longer term, we project average annual sales growth of approximately 8% from 2025 through 2029, an increase of 2% from our prior long-term sales growth expectations.
Georgia Power's total retail electric sales growth is projected to be approximately 12% over the same period. Our Commercial segment, which includes data centers and currently represents approximately 1/3 of total retail electricity sales, is projected to grow an average of 18% from 2025 to 2029. As we have highlighted several times in the past, we take a very measured and disciplined approach to forecasting incremental electric load. As Chris mentioned in his remarks, the extraordinary growth in our forecast represents a fraction of the total economic development pipeline. Informed by our experience and continuous engagement with prospective and existing customers, our forecasts are significantly risk-adjusted as it pertains to both timing and load size. Serving this load reliably requires significant capital investments in the coming years. Our base capital investment forecast over the next 5 years is $63 billion, 95% of which is at our state-regulated utilities.
This represents a $14 billion or approximately 30% increase from our forecast just 1 year ago. In addition to increases for previously announced new projects at Southern Power and the expansion plans for our largest interstate natural gas pipeline, incremental investment in our transmission system is the largest driver of increased capital expenditures in our forecast. Our capital investment plan supports projected long-term state-regulated average annual rate base growth of approximately 7%, a 1% increase from our forecast 1 year ago. Our forecast reflects an approach to capital forecasting consistent with that, which we have used in the past and that we have not included potential capital investments primarily new or expanded generation resources, which remains subject to regulatory processes. For example, there are outstanding requests for proposals, or RFPs, for new resources from the previously approved Georgia Power Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP, that represent approximately 13,000 megawatts.
There are also potential incremental FERC-regulated natural gas pipeline investments to meet the increasing energy needs of customers in the Southeast. Combined, we estimate that reasonable outcomes for these opportunities represent a potential range of incremental regulated capital investments totaling $10 billion to $15 billion for 2025 to 2029. As a reminder, we are currently in active regulatory processes for the vast majority of these opportunities, and given the timing of these ongoing regulatory processes, it’s likely that we could have better line of sight on a substantial portion of these potential incremental investments later this year, at which time we could update our base capital investment plan. The financing plan we have provided supports our base capital plan and continues to fund the business 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 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 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 Board of Directors, we project continued modest increases in the dividend over our forecast horizon. This should serve to lower our dividend payout ratio into the low to mid-60% range as we balance our equity needs with this very important component of our value proposition. Turning now to our earnings guidance for 2025 and beyond.
Our adjusted earnings per share guidance range for 2025 is $4.20 to $4.30 per share. Our adjusted guidance midpoint of $4.25 represents 6% growth from our 2024 adjusted EPS guidance midpoint. Our projected long-term adjusted EPS growth rate guidance is unchanged at 5% to 7% from our 2024 guidance. Clearly, we are seeing strong fundamentals that we expect to support our long-term growth. These growth drivers become increasingly significant in the latter years of our forecast horizon. At the same time, interest rates, which are now expected to be higher for even longer, continue to be a partially offsetting factor as our parent company debt gets refinanced at meaningfully higher rates than the securities outstanding today. That said, we are increasingly encouraged about the strength of our long-term earnings outlook. All else being equal, and assuming the current positive momentum continues, including the potential for a significant portion of the incremental capital opportunities we’ve highlighted materializing, we believe our long-term adjusted EPS should be near the top of our projected long-term range.
Assuming this potentially improved trajectory appears sustainable, we also could be positioned to rebase our 5% to 7% projected growth trajectory at a higher starting point as early as 2027. Chris, I'll now turn the call back over to you.
Thank you, Dan. We are very excited about the future here at Southern Company. When it comes to the incredible growth we see, our objective is to serve as much of this growing electric load as we can sustainably serve. The vertically integrated state-regulated service territories that we are privileged to serve are proving well-suited to attracting these large-load customers. And thanks to integrated resource plans and the other orderly processes inherent in our regulated frameworks, our market is also perhaps better suited than the unregulated markets at effectively deploying new resources to serve them. Our disciplined approach to forecasting these needs will continue to include a measured, risk-adjusted methodology as well as pricing and contract terms for new large local customers that continue to benefit and protect our existing customers and investors. As we continue to grow, strong credit quality remains paramount.
This important buffer against adversity distinguishes Southern Company from much of the industry and serves to insulate investors from sudden market impacts as the world around us changes. Additionally, one of my top priorities is our team here at Southern Company. We believe we have one of the most talented and deepest benches in the industry, and continuing to prioritize and invest in the development of our future leaders is crucial to maintain our competitive edge and ensuring our continued long-term success. And finally, we aspire to deliver premier risk-adjusted total returns to investors. Our aim is to be a high-quality, must-own stock and a company built to endure, and we believe delivering exceptional value to our shareholders is best achieved by putting our customers first, including providing reliable and affordable energy. We had a phenomenal year in 2024, and I'm extremely proud of all we have accomplished as one team across our company.
Southern Company is poised for a bright future, and I cannot be more excited about the opportunities ahead of us. Thank you for joining us this afternoon, and thank you for your continued interest in Southern Company. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
And before we do, let me just say thanks for everyone's patience. The webcast apparently was only not working temporarily; the dial-in is working fine. We will have the entirety of the recording posted for replay after the call.
分析師問答
The first question comes from Carly Davenport with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Maybe just to start on the earnings growth cadence. Could you just flesh out your comments a bit more there in terms of where you could trend in that 5% to 7% range as we move through the 5 years of the current plan, just as you think about the increased rate base growth and the upside capital investment opportunities? And maybe just anything that you see at this point that could potentially derail that trend?
Sure, Carly. Thanks for the question. Thanks for joining us. The first thing to say is what we've continued to reinforce over time is we are where we were. So, we have this terrific outlook of 5% to 7% long-term, and now we are seeing some incremental fundamental things being additive to the overall profile. Look, the words we're using are adding durability. That's not code for anything, that’s simply suggesting that this is not a fight every year to just get to where we need to be. There are enough fundamentals coming into play that this is a long-term outlook that we're beginning to get even more confidence in being able to sustain for a long period of time. With this incremental update that we just had today and the potential incremental capital that we could get more clarity on in the very foreseeable future, we're solidly within our range and potentially with those incremental updates sustainably near the top. How we feel positioned—for the long term, as early as 2027, is to be able to not change the 5% to 7% per se or perhaps start that growth rate from a higher sustained point. In the near term, we are where we were.
Great. That's super helpful. I appreciate that. And then maybe just on that $10 billion to $15 billion of investment opportunities above the plan. Could you talk a little bit about how we should think about the split between what's at Georgia Power versus you referenced that natural gas pipeline opportunity? And any color in terms of the outcomes that underpin that estimated CapEx?
Yes, absolutely. It is substantially all Georgia Power. There is some degree of the natural gas pipelines. I think in our 10-K, we disclosed a number of up to $14 billion associated with that Georgia Power item. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the regulatory processes are ongoing for those. And so we're going to maintain the same discipline we have in the past. We're not going to get ahead of digging into details and speaking to that. So around July, we'll start to get some clarity. What I will say is, look, the dollars are substantial—if you look at the RFPs that are on Slide 16 and the nature of those, I'll just give you historical context, right? I mean the all-source, as an example, that's a big megawatt amount. Historically, all-source RFPs have tended to be larger dispatchable resources. In the current market, all of that excess capacity previously kind of bid in as purchases, a substantial amount is being soaked up by all the load-serving entities in the region. So, the availability of excess capacity is much tighter; the likelihood of having to build new is significantly greater. I'll stop there, Carly, and see if that addresses your question.
Team, very nicely done. I feel the confidence exceeding from you guys. With that said, just maybe to add to the commentary on the regulated side of the business. You provided a number of comments about Southern Power. Is there any kind of metric you can disclose around the cumulative earnings trajectory that you guys are seeing there today or the potential of repowering on a cumulative basis through the early part of the decade? Obviously, you have a number of different assets at which prices are not disclosed that come up. So clearly, there's an opportunity. It's just difficult to discern externally, and how does that add incrementally ultimately to that commentary on 5% to 7%, if you can elaborate, if you don't mind.
Yes, happy to answer that, Julien. What I would say, again, I’ll keep coming back to the work because I think it just fits the opportunities at Southern Power really play into this concept of durability and the sustainability, if you will, of that trajectory over the long term. Substantially, all of Southern Power's current assets are under long-term contracts, and that's true through the end of this decade. The opportunities that exist for recontracting all kind of lend themselves to benefits into the next decade, adding to that durability concept. When it comes to options to build new brownfield gas plants or to build new generation outside of the Southeast, those two lend themselves to a similar timeframe—not because of a lack of opportunity, but because of what you’re seeing broadly in the industry in terms of the timeline to deploy such resources, getting new equipment, and the construction process.
That, too, becomes kind of an end of the plan into the next decade opportunity. In the interim, we’re actively in the process of repowering our first repowering project at one of our wind facilities. We’ve got new solar facilities under construction. I think you’ll see us continue to be opportunistic, if you will, where those opportunities make sense. They may be very limited, but if we see them and we like them, we’ll certainly pursue them. All of that to say, Julien, Southern Power will remain, I’d characterize it as just a steady contributor to the status quo, the opportunity exists at the end of the period and into the next decade.
And Julien, one thing I would add, I think even us having this conversation seeks to show you kind of how these complementary businesses afford us greater durability with the opportunities we see in the marketplace today and the excitement that we have around them. We hadn’t had a lot of discussions about them in the past, but as we see what is transpiring in the marketplace today and the opportunities that are in front of us with these complementary businesses, we thought it was important to share what we see and what we understand, how this supports our path, our earnings growth in terms of where we're headed, but also how it supports our durability.
Yes. And if I can complement that question further, I mean you talk about retail sales accelerating, obviously, within your regulated confines. How do you think about leveraging the sites themselves for co-location opportunities or supplementing not just with repowering but additional outright potential gas turbines here to serve these data center opportunities? I mean, again, if you think about Southern Power recontracting, but truly additional within or in adjacent service territories, how does that fit into the plan as well, just to be clear?
Yes, Julien, so like if you’re looking at Slide 8 in our deck for Southern Power, kind of getting to the heart of what you’re asking in terms of leveraging what’s happening in the Southeast. The things to look to there are the upgrades on the current natural gas fleet opportunity, brownfield gas plants in the Southeast. Again, those are when we talk about the pipeline, you see it on one of our other slides, that pipeline of 50 gigawatts to the mid-2030s. So, this is clearly a very long-term opportunity. Southern Power absolutely has the opportunity to play into that. You mentioned kind of co-location, etc. That’s not part of our market design, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We appreciate and are benefited by this wonderful vertically integrated market that we operate in. But in terms of them being able—Southern Power being able to serve load-serving entities that are then in turn serving data centers, there’s tremendous opportunity.
So, I appreciate the additional color on the capital plan and potential growth opportunities. Just wanted clarity on one piece of that. So, Dan, you mentioned the ability to reach the high end and also mentioned this possibility of rebasing. I guess, first of all, why is '27 kind of a key year for that that might drive it? Is there any way to give any sense of the size of rebasing that might be there?
Yes, thanks for the question, Steve. This won’t surprise you; we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves. In terms of assessing the magnitude of any rebasing, let’s just wait until we rebase if that happens to measure it. In terms of why 2027, it’s a lot of different moving parts. It’s, to a large degree, exactly what we keep describing: this tremendous growth that is happening is long term in nature. The ramp-up in the capital spending and the revenues from these large load customers are more back-end loaded in the plan than not. But it also—I mentioned this very briefly in the prepared remarks—is a function of what’s happening right in front of us with interest costs. That is probably the biggest ballast in the early years and kind of weighting it down to a degree. As we refinance some of our existing securities that are today at ultra-low rates, those having to be refinanced in this current market. Once we get past that and these opportunities really become more tangible than just a forecast, and we feel really good about them, that’s kind of—put simply, that’s really what’s behind the 2027.
Got it. Okay. So basically, some of the headwind maybe moderates. Then that's been there in the earlier years then.
There’s only so much debt that needs to be refinanced.
Yes. That’s good. Okay. And then I guess just in terms of—I think you recently got approval for a change in the way that you can contract with data centers in Georgia. So, I guess I’d be curious kind of like what have you been doing to date before that? What are you now able to do differently going forward?
Steve, we were doing a lot of that already. I think the codification and the signaling to the data center customers was something that has been very appreciated by them and the marketplace. But yes, as you know, the Georgia Public Service Commission approved these rules and regulations in January to ensure that all the risk and cost is shown with large load customers, 100-plus megawatts, to make sure that there was balance and a fair approach to all customers providing tools like credit requirements, longer-term contracts from 5 years to 15 years, minimum billing, slight specific costs already being paid by customers. These things are already being done. Some of it is new and different, but some of it’s not. We were already deploying a lot of these practices before.
Yes. One of the ones that are kind of incremental, Steve, that we think is just going to bring tremendous benefits to us and kind of executing on serving this growth are some of the credit or collateral requirements that are going to be required of customers in our pipeline. Those provisions are frankly going to help us weed out the more speculative projects. As a result, for those who are watching, you may see the size of the pipeline shrink a little bit over the next 3 months to 6 months. That’s not because the customers that are ultimately going to end up locating in our state have gone away; it’s because the more speculative ones are unwilling to kind of put up the collateral necessary in order to stay in the queue. The feedback we’ve heard from many of the large customers, the customer names you’d be familiar with that want to build all this infrastructure, are excited about these changes because it helps them ensure that the company is focused on serving the needs that are for lack of a better term, more real than not.
Just quick, I guess, housekeeping. The 5% to 7% growth rate from '24, is that off of '24 actual or off the midpoint of the '24 range?
It's off of our 2024 guidance. So yes, not a fact we're just trying to reflect—the kind of normal course of business, not any kind of one-time things that might be in the number.
Great. Perfect. And on Slide 17, I think maybe following up on Carly's question earlier, the $10 billion to $15 billion capital investments. The company typically gives us this refresh on this fourth quarter call; just how will the announcements go or how can we track chipping away at this wood here? Is it on you give quarterly updates or should we wait until fourth quarter?
I think with the clarity we’ll have, it’s certainly possible that by the time of our second quarter call, we could provide a little more visibility on this. I think the fourth quarter will remain kind of our official time to update everything, but with the magnitude and pace of this, perhaps there will be an update in July.
Just one quick question. We've discussed a lot already, and all my other questions have been answered. Just reconciling the CapEx increase to equity—so CapEx went up $13 billion and it looks like—and you only gave—you gave partial equity last time around. Now this time, you've given the equity towards the 5-year plan. Thank you for doing that. But just it would put the equity on my math roughly 20% of the capital increase, and you pointed to 30% to 40%, so maybe what are the moving pieces? Is it slowing down dividend growth? Is it more tax transferability monetization? Just what's—what are the moving pieces there?
Yes, Durgesh, I want to cop out and just say it’s all of the above. You really did hit on some of the key things. It’s the other cash flow improvements. The transferability is certainly supporting the overall 5-year plan with all the tax credits that we have, the kind of everything we’ve done to take equity need off the table prior to this—not just the $500 million worth that we took off the day of 2025, but just how we thought about our financing plan last year with equity content. It’s also just making sure that we are taking a pragmatic long-term view on our objectives. I think we are incredibly well positioned. We definitely prioritize having that buffer against adversity, but there’s absolutely no need to sneeze jerk to hit a particular number in any particular year as long as our long-term objectives and discipline remain.
Are you looking at any policy support to help attract data center growth in Alabama specifically? And are you looking at any changes to tariff design for these hyperscale customers like the changes made in Florida?
I'm not aware of any tariff legislation or incentives in Alabama at this time. They do happen as they do overall economic development; there are some incentive packages that they have available, but I'm not aware of any kind of legislative effort underway. And the second part of your question was?
Look, we've got tremendous flexibility in the way we contract with large load customers. There's really not any kind of changes necessary to attract and serve and price appropriately those customers.
And that will conclude today's question-and-answer session. Sir, are there any closing remarks?
Again, let me thank each of you for taking time to spend with us today, and thank you for your interest in Southern Company. We are incredibly excited about our future, and we look forward to talking to you again in the future. Thank you very much, and have a good day.
And before we do, let me just say thanks for everyone's patience. The webcast apparently was only not working temporarily; the dial-in is working fine. We will have the entirety of the recording posted for replay after the call.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Southern Company Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. You may now disconnect, and we thank you for your participation.