NEW YORK, May 18, 2026, 05:03 EDT
- Dominion Energy traded at $69.00 in U.S. pre-market hours, jumping 11.78%. The stock ended Friday at $61.73.
- NextEra Energy is said to be in talks on a mainly stock bid close to $76 per share, or around $66 billion.
- The difference between the initial price and the reported offer puts deal risk, regulatory uncertainty and moves in NextEra shares in play.
Dominion Energy shot higher in U.S. pre-market hours Monday after word that NextEra Energy is considering a bid around $76 a share for the utility. Dominion was indicated at $69.00 ahead of the open, still about 9% under the rumored offer, after closing at $61.73 on Friday.
Timing is key here. The New York Stock Exchange plans regular hours on Monday, opening at 9:30 a.m. and closing at 4 p.m. EDT, and May 18 isn’t a 2026 NYSE holiday. That means the deal news hits when the full market is open and buyers are at their desks—not during a slow holiday session.
NextEra isn’t going in with an all-cash offer. The company is said to be ready to give about 0.8 of its shares for every Dominion share, plus a bit of cash. So the value of the deal would depend on how NextEra’s stock trades. Sellers would get paid mostly in NextEra shares instead of cash. NextEra investors would end up with roughly 75% of the merged company, according to the report.
Power demand is driving the news. U.S. electricity use broke records for the second year in a row in 2025 and is on track to rise, with data centers securing utility contracts. That’s boosted the value of regulated power firms as strategic assets. A merger would form one of the largest U.S. utilities by market cap, with a combined value near $400 billion including debt, Reuters said, citing the Financial Times.
Dominion is a key name in the data center power space. On its May 1 earnings call, the company reported it had over 50 gigawatts of data-center capacity in the pipeline, with about 10.4 GW already tied up in electric service deals. CEO Robert Blue told Goldman Sachs’ Carly Davenport that Dominion keeps seeing “incredibly strong demand” for new Virginia data centers and hasn’t picked up on “no detectable change” in customer interest. The Motley Fool
Dominion came into the report with steadier fundamentals than a year ago. The company reported first-quarter GAAP net income at 69 cents a share and operating earnings of 95 cents a share. Dominion kept its full-year 2026 operating earnings guidance between $3.45 and $3.69 a share. Operating earnings, which are non-GAAP, exclude certain items from reported results.
Barclays’ Nicholas Campanella lifted his price target on Dominion to $70 from $66 this month, sticking with an Overweight rating. “Solid” is how the analyst described the first-quarter report, after Wall Street had already started to raise the bar. TipRanks
NextEra is the main comparison here. It has a much bigger market cap and the stock for a possible deal: NextEra’s value stood at about $194.69 billion, while Dominion was at $54.29 billion, based on LSEG numbers cited by Reuters. Duke Energy and Southern Co. are still big names among regulated utilities, but the story now is whether NextEra can use its size to pick up Dominion’s operations in Virginia and the Carolinas.
The risks here are not minor. Talks might break down, and a deal based mostly on NextEra stock could shrink if those shares drop. Antitrust and energy regulators would have to sign off on a transaction this large. Dominion has also flagged risks with data-center growth: heavy demand in narrow areas, permitting, getting approvals, delays in construction, and market conditions for capital.
Dominion investors are looking at a stock reflecting takeover hopes, but not a done deal. The premium’s in the price. Monday’s session will give a better read on whether the market bets the news means a real shot at $76, or just another utility buyout story facing legal, regulatory, and buyer-share hurdles.
