SOUTHERN CO (SO)

Southern Company is a holding company operating primarily through three business lines: traditional electric operating companies (Alabama Power, Georgia Power, and Mississippi Power), Southern Power Company, and Southern Company Gas. The traditional electric operating companies are vertically integrated utilities that own generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, providing retail electric service across most of Alabama and Georgia and southeastern Mississippi (approximately 116,000 square miles, population ~17 million), plus wholesale sales to municipal systems, cooperatives, and neighboring utilities; Alabama Power alone serves roughly 400 cities and towns and wholesale customers including AMEA and rural cooperatives. These operating companies rely on a fuel mix of natural gas, coal, and nuclear (for Alabama Power and Georgia Power), with costs generally recovered through fuel adjustment clauses, and participate in a coordinated power pool under an Intercompany Interchange Contract administered by system service company SCS.

Southern Power develops, constructs, acquires, owns, and manages power generation assets—including significant renewable (solar and wind) and natural gas facilities—selling electricity at market-based rates to investor-owned utilities, independent power producers, municipalities, electric cooperatives, other load-serving entities, and commercial/industrial customers, primarily through long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs); as of year-end 2023 its fleet totaled 12,498 MW of nameplate capacity, held through wholly owned assets and various partnership arrangements including tax equity structures. Southern Company Gas is an energy services holding company whose core business is natural gas distribution serving approximately 4.4 million customers across Illinois, Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee through roughly 77,900 miles of pipeline and 14 storage facilities, complemented by gas pipeline investment interests (including a 50% stake in the 7,000-mile Southern Natural Gas pipeline and the Dalton Pipeline) and gas marketing services through SouthStar, which serves about 665,000 commodity customers with natural gas and related price-stability and bill-management products in competitive markets. Additional subsidiaries support the enterprise: Southern Nuclear operates and manages the system's nuclear plants (Farley, Hatch, and Vogtle Units 1–4); Southern Linc provides digital wireless communications and, through Southern Telecom, fiber optic services across roughly 122,000 square miles in the Southeast; Southern Holdings serves as an intermediate holding company for various investments; and PowerSecure develops distributed energy, resilience, and microgrid solutions for commercial, industrial, governmental, and utility customers.

The company maintains ongoing, multi-billion-dollar construction programs across its segments to support new generation, transmission, distribution, environmental compliance, and infrastructure improvements, and manages fuel procurement (natural gas, coal, nuclear fuel) through long-term supply, transportation, and storage contracts to ensure reliable system operations amid a regulatory and market environment overseen by state regulators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.