Dominion Energy Inc
Dominion Resources, Inc. (Dominion), is a producer and transporter of energy. The Company is a provider of electricity, natural gas and related services to customers primarily in the eastern region of the United States Dominion's portfolio of assets includes approximately 27,500 megawatts of generating capacity, 6,300 miles of electric transmission lines, 56,900 miles of electric distribution lines, 11,000 miles of natural gas transmission, gathering and storage pipeline and 21,800 miles of gas distribution pipeline, exclusive of service lines of two inches in diameter or less. Dominion also operates one of the underground natural gas storage systems, with approximately 947 billion cubic feet of storage capacity, and serves nearly six million utility and retail energy customers in 15 states. In July 2013, Dominion Resources Inc acquired three solar-power development projects near Indianapolis, Ind., from Sunrise Energy Ventures.
Carries 195.8x more debt than cash on its balance sheet.
Current Price
$63.94
-0.87%GoodMoat Value
$50.95
20.3% overvaluedDominion Energy Inc (D) — Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
AI Call Summary AI-generated
The 30-second take
Dominion Energy had a solid start to the year, with earnings slightly ahead of expectations. The company is making steady progress on its massive offshore wind farm, which is on schedule, but warned that new tariffs could increase the project's cost. Management remains very optimistic about continued strong demand for power from data centers in its service territory.
Key numbers mentioned
- First quarter operating earnings per share of $0.93
- 2025 operating EPS guidance midpoint of $3.40
- Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project completion at 55%
- Potential total tariff impact on CVOW (if policy continues) of approximately $500 million
- CVOW updated total project cost of $10.8 billion
- Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center estimated cost of approximately $1.5 billion
What management is worried about
- The impact of tariffs on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is difficult to fully assess as actual costs depend on tariff requirements and rates at the time of component delivery.
- There is a risk of stranded costs from data centers if they do not pay their full cost of service, which the new proposed rate class aims to address.
- The company experienced a tragic employee fatality at a station in South Carolina, underscoring ongoing safety risks.
- Uncertainty remains regarding the final cost of PJM network upgrades, with the final number not known until July.
- Changes to federal tax credit transferability policy are something the company is watching carefully.
What management is excited about
- The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is on schedule, 55% complete, and months away from first power delivery in early 2026.
- Data center demand remains very high with no evidence of slowing, and the company has approximately 10 gigawatts of capacity already under contract.
- The proposed Chesterfield gas-fired plant represents an affordable "all-of-the-above" energy source at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion.
- The company's first Virginia base rate increase filing since 1992 includes new customer protections and a proposed rate class for high-energy users like data centers.
- Supply chain performance for the wind project is strong, with key supplier Siemens Gamesa on-time or ahead of schedule.
Analyst questions that hit hardest
- James Kennedy (Guggenheim Partners) - Potential stop-work order costs: Management gave a long, contextual answer about why a pause was unlikely and avoided providing a specific cost estimate, stating they would have to evaluate the facts if it happened.
- Anthony Crowdell (Mizuho) - Residential sales softness: The response was somewhat defensive, pivoting to highlight strong overall and commercial sales while downplaying the residential weakness as not expected to persist.
- Jeremy Tonet (JPMorgan) - De-risking 2026 equity needs: The answer was evasive on specifics, acknowledging it was an option but not committing to any plan, stating they would act "opportunistically as the market warrants."
The quote that matters
CVOW remains one of the most affordable sources of energy for our customers.
Bob Blue — Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer
Sentiment vs. last quarter
This section cannot be generated as no previous quarter summary or context was provided.
Original transcript
Operator
Welcome to the Dominion Energy First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Currently, all lines are in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, we will take questions. I will now hand the call over to David McFarland, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer.
Good morning, and thank you for joining Dominion Energy's first quarter 2025 earnings call. Earnings materials, including today's prepared remarks, contain forward-looking statements and estimates that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for a discussion of factors that may cause results to differ from management's estimates and expectations. This morning, we will discuss some measures of our company's performance that differ from those recognized by GAAP. Reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, which we can calculate, are contained in the earnings release kit. I encourage you to visit our Investor Relations website to review webcast slides as well as the earnings release kit. Joining today's call are Bob Blue, Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer; Steven Ridge, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Diane Leopold, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. I will now turn the call over to Steven.
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. Since the conclusion of the business review, we've communicated three priorities: one, consistently achieving our financial commitments; two, continued on-time achievement of major construction milestones for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project; and three, achieving constructive regulatory outcomes that demonstrate our ability to work cooperatively with regulators and stakeholders to deliver results that benefit both customers and shareholders. By fulfilling these goals, we empower our employees to deliver on our critical mission to provide the reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy that powers our customers every day. On today's call, we'll address each of these areas, starting with achieving our financial commitments. As shown on Slide 3, we're off to a strong start to the year with first quarter operating earnings of $0.93 per share, which includes $0.03 of better-than-normal weather, $0.02 of RNG 45Z income, $0.02 of better-than-expected sales, strong rider investment growth and a combination of O&M and tax timing helps that we expect to normalize through the rest of the year. First quarter GAAP results were $0.75 per share. We are affirming all financial guidance provided on our fourth quarter earnings call, including 2025 operating earnings per share of $3.28 to $3.52 per share, inclusive of RNG 45Z income with a midpoint of $3.40. As a reminder, a summary of all adjustments between operating and GAAP results is included in Schedule 2 of the Earnings Release Kit. Additionally, a summary of all drivers for earnings relative to the prior year period is included in Schedule 4 of the Earnings Release Kit. Turning to our financing plan as shown on Slide 4. We've sold approximately $1 billion of forward-settled common equity under our existing ATM program at a weighted average price of approximately $57 and expect to complete $200 million of DRIP-related equity issuance by year-end. This is consistent with our 2025 common equity guidance. We view this level of steady equity issuance under existing programs in the context of our sizable growth capital spending program as appropriate to keep our consolidated credit metrics within the guidelines for our strong credit ratings category. We remain focused on balance sheet conservatism and there is no change to our previously communicated credit-related targets. Turning briefly to data centers. As a reminder from our fourth quarter update, we have approximately 40 gigawatts of data center capacity in various stages of contracting, including what is now approximately 10 gigawatts of capacity contracted under electric service agreements. Since our last call, we have not observed any evidence of slowing demand from data center customers across our service area. In conclusion, I'll reiterate that I'm highly confident in our ability to deliver on our financial plan. The financial guidance has been built to be appropriately but also not unreasonably conservative to weather unforeseen challenges that may come our way. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bob.
Thank you, Steven. Turning to safety performance. Our Dominion Energy family experienced tragedy on March 31, when Ryan Barwick, a material fuel handler at Wateree Station in Eastover, South Carolina, died after being severely injured while unloading a railcar. We are deeply saddened by the loss of our dedicated colleague, and our thoughts and prayers continue to be with his family, friends, coworkers and community. Safety is our first core value. It's at the heart of our corporate culture and we will continue to improve until we achieve the only acceptable safety statistic: zero injuries. Next on our Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. I'd like to start with a few project highlights on slide 5. The project is 55% complete, months away from first delivery of electricity to customers in early 2026 and on schedule for full completion at the end of next year. It represents the fastest and most economical way to deliver almost 3 gigawatts of electricity to Virginia's grid to support America's AI and cyber preeminence in the largest data center market in the world, to support US shipbuilding at customers like Huntington Ingalls, the largest military shipbuilding company in the United States and one of our largest customers, and to support some of the country's largest and most important military and defense installations. It has robust bipartisan support from Virginia government and congressional leaders, local communities, military and defense interests, the commercial marine industry, as well as civic, educational, environmental, labor and community partners. It's created approximately 2,000 direct and indirect American jobs and generated $2 billion in American economic activity. And finally, it's supported by Virginia law and approved by the State Corporation Commission and federal agencies. In summary, this project is consistent with the goal of securing American energy dominance and is part of our comprehensive all-of-the-above energy strategy to affordably meet growing energy needs. Since our last update, work has continued to pace. As shown on slide 6, 100% of the project's 176 transition pieces have been rolled, 86% have been successfully steel welded and 50% are now complete, including the 59 that we have successfully installed since we began that work on December 31. We expect the final transition piece to be completed in October. More than 80% of the project's 176 monopiles have been completed and successfully delivered to Virginia, including the 78 that were installed during the last installation season. We expect deliveries of the final 32 monopiles to continue steadily in the coming weeks. The first offshore substation was installed on March 10 with the remaining two offshore substations on track to be delivered this summer and installed in the fall. Siemens Gamesa is making excellent and on-time progress in the fabrication of the project's 176 wind turbines. The sections for 28 full towers have been completed with 45 additional towers currently in production. In addition, 36 nacelles are complete or awaiting final testing and 28 blades have been fully cast. Finally, as shown on slide 10, Charybdis, our Made in America Jones Act-compliant installation vessel, is expected to enter service and begin making its way to Virginia in the next four to eight weeks on schedule to support turbine installation this summer as planned. Before I turn to tariff exposure, I'd like to highlight that the cost for project components, excluding tariff impacts, has remained in line with the prior update. The project's current unused contingency is unchanged from our last update, $222 million, which now represents about 6% of remaining project costs. Now let me address tariff exposure. It's difficult to fully assess the impact tariffs may have on the project's final cost as actual costs incurred are dependent upon the tariff requirements and rates, if any, at the time of delivery of the specific component. As a result of this ongoing uncertainty, we've provided potential tariff exposure across discrete tariff categories and illustrative durations on slide 11. First, through the end of the first quarter, the project had incurred actual tariff costs of $4 million. Second, if current tariff policy were to continue through the end of the second quarter, that number would increase to about $120 million. Finally, if current tariff policy were to continue through the end of 2026 when the project is expected to fully enter service, the cumulative tariff impact would be expected to be approximately $500 million. For the avoidance of doubt, the corresponding amount borne by Dominion Energy would be about $130 million. Of course, changes to future tariff policy could affect these estimates. We made our quarterly offshore wind construction update filing with the Virginia State Corporation Commission today, in which we increased total project cost by about $120 million, which aligns with our estimate of actual incurred plus projected tariff costs through the end of the second quarter as you see in the table in today's materials. As a result, we recorded a modest charge this quarter for costs not expected to be recovered from customers in accordance with the cost-sharing settlement with Virginia regulators and our 50% cost-sharing partnership agreement with Stonepeak. The cost-sharing and risk-sharing continues to work as intended to protect customers and shareholders. As a result of the cost-sharing settlement approved by Virginia regulators, the updated project cost of $10.8 billion is expected to increase residential customer bills by an average of $0.04 a month over the life of the project. And the updated project LCOE of $62 per megawatt hour inclusive of REC continues to benchmark very favorably with new generation alternatives including solar, battery and gas-fired generation. Let me be clear, CVOW remains one of the most affordable sources of energy for our customers. Turning to the regulatory landscape. Let me provide a brief update on our Virginia biennial review filing, which we submitted at the end of March. The filing highlights Dominion Energy Virginia's reliable and affordable service. If approved, this would be the company's first base rate increase since 1992. Additionally, over the past decade, the company's residential rates have increased at a rate approximately 40% lower than the rate of inflation. Our filing also reflects a new proposed rate class for high energy users, including data centers, as well as new customer protections to ensure those customers continue to pay their full cost of service and that other customer classes are protected from stranded cost. Protections include a 14-year contract commitment to pay for their requested power even if they use less than requested. This is consistent with the concerns and recommendations expressed in the JLOC report last year and in line with proposals in other jurisdictions nationwide. The commission's procedural schedule is shown on slide 13. Separately, on March 3, Dominion Energy Virginia filed with the State Corporation Commission for a certificate of public convenience and necessity to construct and operate the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center, a gas-fired electric generating facility as part of our all-of-the-above approach to energy supply. The roughly 1 gigawatt project, if approved, is expected to cost approximately $1.5 billion to be placed into service in 2029. The capital for this project was included in our most recent capital update. Turning to South Carolina, where policymakers in the House and Senate continue to evaluate potential energy legislation that addresses future generation needs of the state, permitting reform and regulated investment recovery. We're appreciative of the significant time spent to date by the legislature on this important topic. We see these efforts as supportive of our stated aim to contribute to the success of South Carolina's robust and growing economy. Overall, we continue to achieve constructive outcomes in all of our regulated service areas. Next, on Millstone, the facility continues to perform well and provide over 90% of Connecticut's carbon-free electricity and 55% of its output is under a fixed-price contract through late 2029. The remaining output continues to be significantly de-risked by our hedging program. As many of you are aware, there's been recent legislative activity in New England, Rhode Island specifically, aimed at authorizing future additional procurements of nuclear power. We've continued to engage with multiple parties there to find the best value for Millstone. In addition to state-sponsored procurement, we continue to evaluate the prospect of supporting incremental data center activity as well. We feel strongly that any data center options need to be pursued in a collaborative fashion with stakeholders in Connecticut. We'll provide updates as things develop. Before I conclude my remarks, I'd like to take a moment to recognize Diane Leopold. As she announced late last year, Diane is retiring on June 1. Today will be her last earnings call. Diane is one of the brightest, most dedicated, and most capable people in our company and in our industry. Over her 36 years in the utility business, she's demonstrated best-in-class performance in virtually all areas of operations, business development, financial planning and corporate strategy, as well as the construction of several multibillion-dollar energy infrastructure projects. Fortunately, Diane has trained a deep and talented bench to follow in her footsteps. It's been my honor and privilege to work with her for the last 20 years. And I know I speak for Steve and David and the entire Dominion Energy team in thanking her and wishing her well in retirement. With that, let me summarize our remarks on slide 15 by reiterating where Steven began the call with a focus on our three priorities: consistently achieving our financial commitments, continued on-time achievement of major construction milestones for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, and achieving constructive regulatory outcomes that demonstrate our ability to work cooperatively with regulators and stakeholders to deliver results that benefit both customers and shareholders. We're 100% focused on execution. We remain committed to delivering reliable and affordable power for our customers. And with that, we're ready to take your questions.
Operator
At this time, we will open the floor for questions. We'll take our first question from Nick Campanella with Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I appreciate all the disclosure…
Good morning, Nick.
I appreciate all the information you've provided about the CVOW project, particularly regarding the tariffs. Can you share any insights about your discussions with your turbine suppliers and whether these tariffs will affect their ability to meet delivery timelines? I know you mentioned that Siemens is making significant progress, but could you elaborate on your overall level of confidence in this area? Thank you.
Yes, I'll share a few thoughts. If Diane wants to add anything, she can. She was recently on site and assured us she would address all questions today, as she promised during our last earnings call. Our discussions with our suppliers indicate they are all performing exceptionally well. The most recent addition is Siemens Gamesa, which has met all our expectations. They started on schedule and are producing at the anticipated rate. Therefore, we are very confident in our ability to acquire the materials and components we require. We have also communicated the potential impacts of tariffs based on current policy, and there are no changes to our delivery schedules or capabilities.
Yes. The only thing that I would add, all of the raw materials are already purchased, everything is in fabrication right now. And as Bob talked about, Siemens Gamesa, which is the most recent equipment that's entering into fabrication, is actually a little bit ahead of schedule. The team, including myself, were in all of those facilities, the nacelles, the blades, all of them two weeks ago and everything is heading either on track or a little bit ahead of schedule, and deliveries are going to proceed in the coming weeks.
Okay. Great. That's helpful. And just in terms of the monopoles, my understanding is that the season starts today. So just any update on whether you would be kind of kicking that off immediately? And what type of run rate you would expect through the next few months here for monopile installations?
Yes, today marks the start of the monopile installation season, and we are commencing that today. To provide some context, over the past four months, we've successfully installed 60 transition pieces, an offshore substation, and a jack-up that facilitates deepwater export cable. Therefore, starting the monopile installation today is merely a continuation of the consistent offshore progress we have made since the inception of the project. Regarding the run rate, we previously mentioned that once we completed the initial tasks, we achieved a pace of about 25 monopiles per month last season. We believe this pace is sustainable moving forward. While we recognize that weather conditions are a significant factor, we consider this pace to be quite manageable.
Okay. Great. And Diane, congrats on your retirement. Thanks so much.
Thanks. Appreciate that.
Operator
We'll take our next question from James Kennedy with Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Good morning.
Hi, James.
Just kind of continuing with the CVOW. I just want to ask more specifically, maybe on the permitting backdrop. I guess, have you had any conversations or interactions at the state or federal level, that give you a little bit more incremental comfort following the Empire Wind order? Just any more color on the permitting side. Thanks.
Our interactions with the agencies have remained consistent over the past few months. We are fully permitted, as you know. With a project of this size, we check in regularly with the agencies, and we have continued those conversations. For the reasons outlined in our prepared remarks, we are confident that this project will keep moving forward.
Okay. If there were a stop work order, can you give us like a general rule of thumb on like a daily standby or demobilization cost?
Yes. I think that's a very important question. I appreciate you asking. We'd have to evaluate the specific facts and circumstances at the time. And I can't speak to those because I don't know what they are. But if it happens, we would be very transparent in addressing them. But we don't think it's going to be a pause for all the reasons I gave in the prepared remarks. It's the fastest way to get 2.6 gigawatts on the grid to serve tech companies, defense and security installations, and important American industries like shipbuilding. It's employing 2000 people; stopping it would cause energy inflation, specifically authorized by Virginia law. It has bipartisan support in Virginia, particularly the Hampton Roads congressional delegation. So it really doesn't make sense to talk about numbers for a pause or delay. That said, these are prudently made investments. Utilities are entitled to recover prudently incurred costs. And that's certainly true here, subject to the cost sharing the SCC order obviously.
Okay. Perfect. And then just on the tariff scheme itself, the plan has some solar and storage spend as well. I guess just any kind of color as you're thinking about the tariff impacts there and spend profile, any changes? Thanks.
Yes. I mean as we think about tariffs across our business, the impacts we're seeing are manageable. We've worked on our supply chain for some time. We have most of our suppliers are – the vast majority of the materials that we procure are directly from US suppliers. That is certainly true with our solar procurement. We've had for some time an effort to diversify our supply chain and drive supply chain resilience. A chunk of that would have come out of COVID as we started thinking about that. So we think about increasing inventory and ordering thresholds to address longer lead times to ensure that we have multiple sources of supply where it's appropriate. We have been placing some orders ahead of tariff-effective dates to mitigate cost increases where it's possible. So those actions have enabled us to avoid some of the impacts, and obviously our first objective is to avoid impact and keep costs for customers low. So we find tariff costs generally across the business to be manageable.
Excellent. Thanks, guys. And congrats to Diane as well.
Operator
And we'll take our next question from Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, sure. Thanks, and I'll echo congrats to Diane. Job really well done.
And Tom, sorry no more sneaking junk food during. So just on the – I guess first on the tariffs, just we know in case they change, are you – is the contracts basically shifting most of the tariff basically to you? So if they go higher they go lower we can kind of try to gauge the impact. Is that kind of how generally the contracts work? Yes, that's a fair characterization, Steve.
Okay. And then maybe just also – I know it's kind of governor election year. Has any electric topics kind of including CVOW kind of been in the political spectrum at all from either side as part of that?
No. No, there has not been in the gubernatorial race thus far a discussion of CVOW or wind generally. I will say that the lieutenant governor who is the Republican nominee was at our events I don't know 1.5 years, 2 years ago when the first monopile arrived in Tidewater at the port. The Democratic nominee, former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger has been supportive of offshore wind as well. But it hasn't been a topic in the conversation.
Okay. And then I noticed on Chesterfield the approval of the gas plant that's $1.5 billion for a gigawatt plant, which is starting to look quite cheap right now. I just want to make sure that's a good number.
Yes, that's a good number.
Operator
We'll take our next question from David Arcaro with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks, Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, David.
Wondering if you could just give maybe a little bit more color on what you're seeing in terms of data center demand. You mentioned that it has kind of continued from last quarter. But just what is the interest level from hyperscalers any sense of just the scale and how far out I guess are these customers planning and looking to locate in your service territory?
Yes, the demand remains very high, David. I would say that there has been no change from what we discussed on the last call. We are focusing on traditional cloud and inference demand from data centers, and their interest has not diminished. As I have observed since we began collaborating with data center customers over a decade ago, they are always eager to move quickly. That's a fundamental aspect of their business. We have been successful in meeting their needs, and I see no reason for that to change in the future.
Yes. Got it. And these are and they're I guess planning out into the well into the 2030s at this point too just in terms of the megawatts that they're planning and the expansions over time.
Yes, absolutely. I mean if you look at just what they'd be ramping into from what they've already committed to, it takes you to that time frame.
Yes, absolutely. And then separately, just was curious is there any progress or any further clarity around the Millstone and the potential contracting opportunities there?
Yes. No real news on Millstone. As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, Rhode Island there's been legislative activity in Rhode Island. So there's interest but we don't have an update on the timing of when we might take some action with respect to Millstone. As you know, the current contract for 55% of the output goes through August of 2029. So we'll continue to work through that but no news to report today.
Operator
We'll take our next question from Carly Davenport with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just a quick one on the biennial filing. You referenced before the special REIT structure proposed for high-energy users. Can you just talk a little bit about that structure and just sort of based on your conversations with data center customers over time on the terms of an agreement if you feel like that, sort of, reflects customer appetite in terms of the term length and some of the other specifics?
Yes, you're referring to the 14-year contract term. The filing establishes a new rate class for customers with measured or contracted demand of 25 megawatts or more and a measured or expected load factor of at least 75%. This affects approximately 139 customers, which includes around 131 data centers. The focus of this class is on minimum demand charges, where the minimum demand charge will be 80% for transmission distribution and 60% for generation, based on either contracted or actual usage. For new customers, this involves a 14-year contract period with a four-year ramp-up schedule. This approach aims to provide transparency and clarity for these customers, ensuring they contribute fairly and reduce the risk of stranded assets. We already had some provisions for this, but the new filing enhances them. We have consulted with data center customers while preparing this proposed new tariff, and I believe they understand our objectives, with our discussions being quite constructive.
Great. Appreciate that color. And then maybe just a quick follow-up on the earlier question, just on your conversations with data center customers. Are you seeing any change in tone or concern just around the broader economic uncertainty that we've seen and any pause perhaps in some of the new projects that you're expecting to move forward?
The short answer to that question is no. We're seeing continued appetite for additional data center capacity in our service territory.
Operator
We'll take our next question from Anthony Crowdell with Mizuho. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning team. Just two quick questions. One, I think slide 20 residential sales look soft this first quarter. I don't know if you could provide some clarity around that? And then I have a follow-up.
Hey Anthony, it's Steve. Overall, our last twelve months Q1 sales have been very good for us. They are trending slightly higher than our annual guidance, primarily driven by strong sales in the commercial segment, which includes data centers and other commercial customers. We don't believe the slight weakness in residential sales will persist for the rest of the year, and we will monitor that closely. Overall, we're pleased with the direction of sales, and we will share more information as we progress through the upcoming quarters. In summary, the sales outlook for our service territories remains strong.
Great. And if I could follow up on Carly's question on the biennial review, particularly with the requested new tariff for the large load customers. You guys have clearly gone through multiple biennial reviews. Is this making approval of this may be more complicated by introducing a new tariff, or from all your meetings prior to filing and talking to the parties that maybe even helping it out getting the tariff approved?
It's difficult to determine whether it's helping or complicating the situation. The emphasis on rate classes and the cross-subsidies between them has been a consistent aspect of rate cases from the start, so it's not unexpected. I don't believe this particular scenario would change anything in terms of resolving the case effectively.
Operator
We'll take our next question from Durgesh Chopra with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning team. Thank you for your time. My thoughts are with Ryan's family during this difficult time. I was saddened to hear about that incident. Steve, the first quarter EPS for 2025 exceeded our expectations significantly. You also mentioned some cautious guidance. I would like to discuss how the first quarter earnings align with your expectations for the remainder of the year.
Yes, that's a really good question. I'd say very modestly above where we were expecting. Certainly, we didn't have $0.03 of weather baked in. We also didn't have $0.02 of better-than-expected sales baked in which gets back a little bit to Anthony's question about overall trending for sales growth. But I'd point folks to Schedule 4 where we give a quarter-over-quarter growth reconciliation. Let me spend just a second walking through sort of the key drivers. We were at $0.55 in Q1 2024. Obviously, that was before we had completed the entire business review, but a lot of it was clean. Since then, relative to that quarter, we had about $0.08 of weather help. So I mentioned $0.03 better than normal. We also significantly underperformed weather during the first quarter of 2024. So that's on the schedule. I mentioned sales, we've done about $0.04 better on sales. We had about $0.05 of help this quarter from rate cases that occurred later in the year of 2024, so it wouldn't have been captured in the first quarter. Net-net-net, we had about $0.08 of regulatory rider investment growth. And the reason I say net-net is because it will show up at $0.16, but we sold half of that growth under the noncontrolling interest on CVOW to Stonepeak. So net is $0.08 help there. We had about $0.08 of interest expense help. That's largely the impact of debt repayment, the full sort of force of the debt repayment from the majority of the business review asset sales. There's about $0.06 of tax help quarter-over-quarter. So $0.02 of that has to do with the production tax credit for our nuclear sales that's just shaping. $0.02 of it had to do with RNG 45Z which we didn't have last year. $0.02 of that had to do with a small South Carolina tax matter. There was a resolution in a court case that we ultimately hadn't budgeted. So that was a little bit of an unanticipated help as well. And then there's sort of — you net all that and there's about negative $0.01 of miscellaneous items in there. So I'd say, again, weather, sales, a little better than we expected. We've gotten some timing on tax and O&M that I think will normalize through the rest of the year. So we're sticking right now with our original guidance range targeting that midpoint of $3.40. And if we get to the point in the future where we feel like we should revise that, we'll go ahead and do that. But for now, early in the year off to a good start, we're very focused on hitting those numbers. And to the extent we have an opportunity to derisk future years as a result of strong 2025 performance, we would think about doing that as well. So we'll have more information as we work through the year, but feeling really good about the plan.
That's very thorough. It sounds like modestly ahead of your expectations. Okay. Diane, we'll miss you on the field trips and good luck to you. Thanks.
Operator
And we'll take our next question from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. And Diane, I echo the comments before me, I wish you well in retirement here. Maybe just starting off, if you could provide any updates on the outlook for PJM finalizing network cost upgrades? And just wondering, if there's any thoughts, whether tariffs or general inflation might drive upward cost pressures here.
Yeah. On the PJM network upgrades that specific you're asking? …
Yeah.
I wouldn't expect to see that. And we don't have additional information beyond what we provided on the last call. As we said then we had better information than we did before but not perfect. And that continues to be true now. We'll get the final number in July and we certainly don't expect it to be either up or down of the magnitude that the shift was the last time. But we'll know more in July.
Got it. Thank you for that. And transferability has been a big focus in the market whether it's repealed and has an impact on plans, is there any thoughts that you could share there?
Yeah. Jeremy, at the risk of being too thorough in my response, let me give a little color there. So our plan has on average from 2025 through 2029 has an average of about $175 million of transfer tax credits each year. But what really tips us into transferability are the PTCs generated by our share of the offshore wind project. I guess the silver lining with that is that to the extent there were a change in transferability that makes tax equity a reasonably efficient way of replacing sort of the time value of those tax credits. So we feel pretty good about where we're positioned on that. I feel like if there were a change we'd have a pretty effective mitigants, but something we're watching pretty carefully too.
Got it. Thank you very much, and one last one, if I could just with regards to thinking about the ATM with regards to de-risking 2026 equity needs possibly earlier in 2025?
Yeah. We've been aggressive with our financing plan in '25 to take capital raising off the table in a pretty significant way. You can see that from the financing plan. That was the philosophy behind the ATM is getting in front of it at a pretty attractive price. Without giving sort of specific guidance it's absolutely something we would continue to think about is opportunistically finding ways to derisk future financing. That could include getting into the market for ATM that would be settled at the end of 2026 for instance. Sooner rather than later, it's an option available to us. It's nice. And so yes your point is well taken. We'll take those steps opportunistically as the market warrants.
Got it. Thank you for that. I’ll leave it there.
Thanks.
Operator
And this concludes our question-and-answer session. So I'll turn the call back to Bob Blue for closing remarks.
Thanks, everybody for taking the time to join the call today. And enjoy the rest of your day.
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. And you may now disconnect.