Fresh off ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, Harry Sideris, President and CEO of Duke Energy, joined us to reflect on the milestone moment and share insights into the company’s future. He described the experience as a dream come true, celebrating not only the honor of standing on one of the world’s most-watched financial stages often seen on CNBC but also marking 100 years of consistently paying cash dividends to investors through historic challenges like economic downturns and global crises. The conversation highlighted the company’s dual celebration of a century of dividends and 65 years listed on the exchange, alongside its ambitious $103 billion five-year capital plan aimed at supporting rapid growth driven by migration to regions such as Carolinas and Florida, increased onshoring, and rising demand from data centers. Sideris emphasized disciplined investment, affordability for customers, and long-term shareholder value, noting that strategic contracts and infrastructure expansion are designed to keep costs stable while supporting record growth.
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Our 3rd and final guest of the broadcast here this afternoon at the New York Stock Exchange joins us now.
This is Harry Sideris, president and CEO of Duke Energy.
Just got off the podium, ringing the closing bell.
Congratulations.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks.
Great to be here on the iconic floor of the New York Stock Exchange and so proud of a dream come true to ring the bell.
I never thought I'd do something like that.
So that's where I wanted to start.
What was the experience like for you team to actually been up here?
This is, this is one of the most broadcast moments around the entire world every day.
Yes, it was amazing.
It's, it's something I dreamed about every time I watched CNBC and see the people ringing the bell.
I wanted to do that and it really allows us to celebrate 100 years of paying a cash dividend to our investors, which is really important.
And you think about the 100 years that have gone by.
We've had a Great Depression, World War II, a great recession, COVID, and we still paid a dividend because we know how important it is to our investors, both big investors and small investors.
And as we look to the future, we're going to continue. to provide that value for our shareholders.
That's incredible.
We talked so much about value plays for investors, dividend paying stocks in particular.
You're doing 100.
Is that why your firm is down here to celebrate that 100 year mark?
That's incredible.
100 years, and it happens to also coincide with our 65th year on the exchange as well.
So double celebration.
Talk to me about your $103 billion capital plan and some of the other things that you and your team are prioritizing here in early 2026.
You would most want investors.
And viewers of the show to know more about.
Yes, that's a great question.
We have $103 billion that we're going to be investing over the next five years as we're seeing tremendous growth in our service territories.
We have population migration to the Carolinas and Florida.
We have onshoring and then we have data centers that are taking our load from a 0.5% growth up to 5% growth.
That's 10 times the growth that we've experienced.
So we're being very disciplined in how we efficiently and effectively manage that 103 billion.
Dollars so that we make sure that we follow what we've always done, which is making sure our customers get the value, the reliability at the lowest cost possible, and that our investors get their value as well.
How do you still ensure it's the point of value for your investors and your customers.
You're still keeping things affordable.
I mean, let's not pull punches here.
We're still dealing with a macroeconomic backdrop with plenty of questions, lots of uncertainty, and a broader financial market that is prone to its fair share of volatility.
Affordability is top of mind for everyone across the country with housing costs, healthcare costs, insurance costs, food costs.
So we're doing just like we have for over 100 years, really working hard to keep costs low.
Our costs are lower than the national average.
They're increasing lower than the rate of inflation, and that's important to our customers as we build for the future.
And these data centers that are mentioned that are driving the load.
Our contracts are structured to where they're paying their fair share, so they're not spreading their costs over to the broader base of the customers and in fact over time those large loads are actually going to reduce costs to our customers as they take on more of the fixed costs.
We continue to work our way through 4th quarter holiday quarter earnings for a lot of the big.
Companies here at the New York Stock Exchange.
I've got about 30 seconds left.
What were some of your personal highlights for the firm in 2025?
We had a banner year in 2025.
We hit all our financial metrics exceeding our expectations.
We did two transformational transactions that really strengthen our balance sheet, setting us up for this record growth that we have ahead of us.
We signed up almost 5 gigawatts of new data centers in the Carolinas that bring lots of jobs and lots of revenue to those communities, and we're building 14 gigawatts a new generation to power all this.
Harry Sideris, president and CEO of Duke Energy, fresh off the podium, ringing the closing bell here at the big board.
Thanks and come back on the show anytime.