Dominion Discusses Potential Sale Of Competitive Retail Energy Supply Business

During an earnings call this morning, Dominion addressed reports that it was considering a potential sale of its competitive retail natural gas supply business.

Dominion CFO James Chapman confirmed that the company has been fielding inbound inquiries concerning the retail gas business -- on all of it, on the Georgia business acquired in the SCANA transaction, and on the legacy Dominion business

"We're thinking through that, there's certainly no decision," Chapman said

"Importantly, we're thinking about what to do generally, it's not so focused on a [specific sale] process -- should we keep it, status quo; how could we grow it, could there be a way to grow through a JV for example, or some other structure? So it's more thinking along those lines, as opposed to, 'let's sell this thing', cause we're probably not going to do that if it's not accretive," Chapman said

"So no decisions, lots of thought processes, but nothing to share, and I'm not sure there will be," Chapman said

Chapman did generally say that the company is always considering ways to increase shareholder value and increase the percent of its business composed of regulated and regulated-like businesses.

Dominion reports that as of June 30, 2019 it was serving 784,151 natural gas customer accounts under Dominion Energy Solutions and SCANA Energy Marketing, Inc., versus 800,615 as of March 31, 2019 and 351,138 a year ago.