Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC) is an electricity generating and distributing company headquartered in the Chase Tower in the Chicago Loop area of Chicago. It was created in October, 2000 by the merger of PECO Energy Company and Unicom, of Philadelphia and Chicago respectively. Unicom owned Commonwealth Edison. Exelon has 5.4 million electricity customers and serves 485,000 natural gas customers in the Philadelphia suburbs. It is "the country's No. 2 nuclear company."
In October, 2009 Exelon had full or majority ownership of 17 nuclear reactors in 10 nuclear power plants.
Exelon Corporation (Exelon), incorporated in February 1999, is a utility services holding company. It operates through its principal subsidiaries each of which is treated as a segment: Exelon Generation Company, LLC (Generation), Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) and PECO Energy Company (PECO). On December 9, 2010, the Company, through Generation, acquired Exelon Wind, LLC (Exelon Wind), formerly John Deere Renewables, LLC, which is an operator and developer of wind power. Generation acquired 735 megawatts of installed, operating wind capacity located in eight states.
Exelon Generation Company, LLC
Generation is a public utility. Its business consists of the Company’s owned and contracted electric generating facilities, its wholesale energy marketing operations and its retail supply operations. Generation’s three segments include the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and South and West regions. Mid-Atlantic represents Generation’s operations primarily in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland (approximately 36% of capacity). Midwest includes the operations in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota (approximately 46% of capacity). The South and West includes operations primarily in Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Idaho and Oregon (approximately 18% of capacity). Generation’s retail business provides retail electric and gas services as an unregulated retail energy supplier in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. As of December 31, 2010, Generation had ownership interests in 11 nuclear generating stations in service, consisting of 19 units with an aggregate of 17,047 megawatt of capacity. Generation wholly-owns all of its nuclear generating stations, except for Quad Cities Generating Station (75% ownership), Peach Bottom Generating Station (50% ownership) and Salem Generating Station (Salem) (42.59% ownership). Generation’s nuclear generating stations are all operated by Generation, with the exception of the two units at Salem, which are operated by PSEG Nuclear, LLC (PSEG Nuclear).
Generation’s subsidiary includes AmerGen Energy Company, LLC (AmerGen). Through December 31, 2010, Generation has added 101 megawatts of nuclear generation through its uprate program. As of December 31, 2010, Generation owned generation resources with an aggregate net capacity of 25,619 megawatt, including 17,047 megawatt of nuclear capacity. Generation also controlled another 6,139 megawatt of capacity through long-term contracts. As of December 31, 2010, Generation had approximately 54,300 spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies (13,100 tons) stored onsite in SNF pools or dry cask storage, which includes SNF at Zion Station, for which Generation retains ownership. Generation’s wholesale marketing and retail electric supplier operations include the physical delivery and marketing of power obtained through its generation capacity and long-term, intermediate-term and short-term contracts. Generation operates various fossil, hydroelectric and renewable facilities, and maintains ownership interests in several other facilities, including LaPorte, Keystone, Conemaugh and Wyman, which are operated by third parties.
Commonwealth Edison Company
ComEd is a public utility. Its energy delivery business consists of the purchase and regulated retail sale of electricity, and the provision of transmission and distribution services to a diverse base of residential, commercial and industrial customers in northern Illinois, including the City of Chicago. ComEd’s retail service territory has an area of approximately 11,300 square miles. The service territory includes the City of Chicago, an area of about 225 square miles. As of December 31, 2010, ComEd had approximately 3.8 million customers. As of December 31, 2010, there were approximately 66,200 retail customers (primarily commercial and industrial customers), representing approximately 52% of ComEd’s annual retail kilowatt hour sales.
PECO Energy Company
PECO is a is a public utility. Its energy delivery business consists of the purchase and regulated retail sale of electricity and the provision of transmission and distribution services to retail customers in south-eastern Pennsylvania, including the City of Philadelphia, as well as the purchase and regulated retail sale of natural gas. PECO also provides distribution services to retail customers in the Pennsylvania counties surrounding Philadelphia.
PECO’s combined electric and natural gas retail service territory has an area of approximately 2,100 square miles and an estimated population of 3.8 million. PECO provides electric delivery service in an area of approximately 1,900 square miles, with a population of approximately 3.8 million, including approximately 1.5 million in the City of Philadelphia. PECO supplies natural gas service in an area of approximately 1,900 square miles in southeastern Pennsylvania adjacent to the City of Philadelphia, with a population of approximately 2.3 million. PECO delivers electricity to approximately 1.6 million customers and natural gas to approximately 490,000 customers.
Into this bleak picture stepped ComEd's newly appointed CEO, James O'Connor. Beginning in 1980, the ICC granted the utility a series of large rate increases. ComEd began to rebound, and by December 1984 O'Connor was predicting that rates would increase about 2.5 percent a year for three years, level off in 1988, and then stabilize.
In 1986, as ComEd struggled to finance the $7.1 billion building program for the last three of 12 nuclear plants, problems with the company's Braidwood nuclear plant increased its construction cost more than 40 percent. This meant that ComEd would need a 4.8 percent annual increase for 11 years to cover the cost. Many observers felt that ComEd should have canceled or postponed some of its plants in the early 1980s due to underestimated construction costs and overestimated demand.
As a result of overbuilding in its nuclear program, ComEd's generating capacity exceeded average peak demand by 33 percent in 1990 (most utilities maintain a 15 percent surplus). Thus, while many major utilities around the nation were found to be spending $15 to $51 on conservation per customer, ComEd was spending 39 cents per customer, according to a study by a committee of the Chicago City Council.
In 1990, the company's net income fell to $128 million, or 22 cents per share, from the previous year's $693 million, or $2.83 per share, largely because of court-ordered refunds and rate rollbacks. Also in 1990, at a time when customers were growing increasingly unhappy with paying some of the nation's highest rates, the utility's franchise term with the city of Chicago was due to expire. A coalition of community and environmental groups had formed in 1988 to pressure the city to stir up public debate over the city's electricity options. These amounted to a renegotiated franchise or municipal acquisition. Meanwhile, ComEd waged an advertising campaign to tout the quality of its service.
In the summer of 1990, two major substation fires caused 60,000 customers to lose power for up to three days. The city postponed its decision on the franchise issue to allow more time to study the utility's reliability. Negotiations on a new franchise concluded in 1991, and ComEd was granted a 29-year contract.
The company's costs were still high, and with a series of lawsuits on the verge of settlement ComEd cut its dividend in 1992 by a whopping 47 percent. A year later, the company agreed to the biggest refund in utility industry history. Over the next 12 months, ComEd would pay back $1.34 billion to its customers, primarily because it had passed the costs of building unnecessary nuclear plants on to them. A rate reduction of $339 million was also effected.
In 1994, ComEd became part of a newly created holding company, Unicom Corporation. The company had recently been granted legislative approval to create an unregulated energy subsidiary, and the new corporate structure was intended to facilitate this. A subsidiary, Unicom Thermal, was also formed to develop new types of cooling systems to take advantage of laws mandating reductions in ozone-depleting cooling agents. Other subsidiaries would become involved in energy consulting and the manufacture of power generators, though revenues from these operations were small.
Troubles with the company's nuclear power plants continued to bring down profits, and in 1995 a 16 percent reduction in the work force was announced. Moreover, ComEd was being fined regularly by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for incidents ranging from workers planting a small quantity of radioactive material in a coworker's pocket, to an employee being allowed to work while visibly drunk. By the mid-1990s only half of the company's reactors were typically online, with the Zion plant the most seriously troubled. Other problems arose when the company announced the possibility of "rolling blackouts" when peak energy demands exceeded production capacity. Critics pointed out that the company was still charging one of the highest rates for power in the country, yet was openly resisting buying extra electricity during the peak summer cooling season to keep its customers supplied with power.
In January 1998, ComEd finally moved to permanently close its Zion plant, and the following month CEO O'Connor stepped down. His successor was 52-year old John W. Rowe, former CEO of New England Electric System and a lawyer with a strong background in nuclear power issues. Rowe's challenge was not only to bring up the company's ailing bottom line but to develop a strategy for the impending power industry deregulation that Illinois legislators had enacted. This would finally open up the power marketplace to all comers, with business customers available in 1999 and residential users to follow in 2002. Rowe's strategy, which he had developed in his years with New England Electric, was to focus more on delivery of power than production, opening the door to purchasing energy from outside providers. To that end he sold 16 of ComEd's non-nuclear plants for $4.8 billion in early 1999, while the company also sought approval of a $3.4 billion bond issue. He also announced the company's intention to purchase more energy industry service companies, such as heating and air conditioning contractors. Perhaps his boldest gesture was to publicly admit that ComEd's long-time nuclear power strategy had been a mistake.
The 2000 Merger
Both PECO and Unicom were facing challenges related to deregulation when they announced their merger in September 1999. For instance, The Philadelphia Business Journal reported in July 1999 that PECO had lost over 34 percent of its customer load since the market had opened for competition in January. Unicom's ComEd was also experiencing a rash of problems caused by its out-of-date wires, cables, and transformers in the Chicago area. The region experienced power outages from July through August and the firm was forced to spend $20 million to remedy the situation.
Management of both companies believed that in order to operate in the highly competitive environment, it was necessary to evolve from a stand-alone regional utility concern into a large, formidable industry player. As such, PECO and Unicom eyed the merger of equals as a unique opportunity to strengthen their foothold on the U.S. utilities industry. The proposed deal was met with some opposition--the two companies seemed like an odd fit due to PECO's strategy of acquiring nuclear power plants and Unicom's focus on electricity delivery rather than power generation. However, both Rowe and McNeill believed that together, the combined company would be a huge force in both generation and distribution. Rowe claimed in a 1999 United Press International article that the merger would create "a base from which we will build a leading energy delivery business and establish ourselves as a significant competitor in the emerging retail energy marketplace."
Indeed, the combined entity would operate as one of the largest utility firms in the United States, controlling nearly 20 percent of the country's nuclear generation market and serving approximately five million customers. The $31.8 billion merger was officially completed in October 2000. Operating under the new name Exelon Corporation, the company had three main business divisions, including Exelon Generation, which included its nuclear, fossil, and hydro fleet operations, as well as a wholesale marketing division; Exelon Energy Deliver, which included the electricity and gas retail operations of both ComEd and PECO Energy; and Exelon Enterprises, a unit that included the company's utility and energy services that catered to businesses.
Exelon's first year of operation proved to be rocky. The firm's aggressive expansion of its Enterprises business group--a group that focused on forays into new ventures, especially in the telecommunications market--failed to pay off. The company laid off over 1,500 employees in that division as it reported losses through 2002. Then, in March 2002, co-CEO McNeill announced his resignation amid rumors that he was unable to see eye-to-eye with Rowe on the expansion direction of the company. McNeill, ready to pursue a large acquisition to bolster Exelon's generating capacity, was challenged by Rowe, who felt that a purchase of a mid-sized utility offering both generation and distribution would best fit Exelon's portfolio. In the end, McNeill stepped down as both an executive and director of the firm, leaving Rowe at the helm.
By February 2002, electricity prices were down nearly 30 percent and the power generation sector of the industry was experiencing an over supply. In fact, the power generation industry overall was faltering due to the public collapse of Enron Corporation, a disaster that left consumers leery of the competitive energy market. To make matters worse, Exelon was hit by a class action law suit in May 2002 by shareholders that claimed the company reported misleading statements regarding its financial position in April through September 2001. The suit claimed that Exelon failed to reveal significant information regarding the losses experienced by its Enterprises group. While the company claimed that it would meet its projected $4.50 per share earnings for 2001, it instead secured consolidated earnings of $4.43 per share.
Despite these challenges, Exelon management was confident that the company would continue to grow as a leading utility concern. With a long-standing history behind it, the newly formed entity was indeed prepared to handle the obstacles brought on by the changing marketplace. How the company chose to handle these obstacles however, remained to be seen.
Principal Subsidiaries: Commonwealth Edison Company; PECO Energy Company
Principal Divisions: Exelon Energy Delivery Company, LLC; Exelon Generation Company, LLC; Exelon Ventures Company, LLC.
Principal Competitors: Ameren Corporation; Dynegy Inc.; PPL Corporation.
OVERALL
Beta: 0.63
Market Cap (Mil.): $27,640.81
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 662.21
Annual Dividend: 2.10
Yield (%): 5.03
FINANCIALS
EXC.N Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 11.16 22.42 21.65
EPS (TTM): -9.73 -- --
ROI: 5.33 0.97 1.26
ROE: 18.13 2.22 2.82
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1902 as Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) and 1907 as The Commonwealth Edison Co., Inc. (Unicom)
Employees: 29,200
Sales: $15.1 billion (2001)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol: EXC
NAIC: 221122 Electric Power Distribution; 221113 Nuclear Electric Power Generation; 221112 Fossil Fuel Electric Power Generation; 551112 Offices of Other Holding Companies
Key Dates:
1902: The Philadelphia Electric Company (PE) is incorporated.
1907: Samuel Insull merges Commonwealth Electric Company and Chicago Edison Company to form Commonwealth Edison (ComEd).
1927: The Pennsylvania-New Jersey Interconnection is created.
1929: PE merges with United Gas Improvement Company.
1932: Banks take over Insull's MWU holding company; Insull is forced to resign amid fraud and embezzlement charges.
1943: PE becomes an independent company once again.
1953: The Public Service Company of Northern Illinois merges with ComEd.
1960: ComEd operates the nation's first privately financed commercial nuclear power station.
1968: Regulatory delays prevent the completion of PE nuclear power plants in Limerick.
1974: ComEd acquires Cotter Corporation.
1980: ComEd's earnings per share sink to their lowest level in 15 years.
1987: PE's earnings fall after the Public Utilities Commission refuses to allow a rate hike.
1994: PE adopts the name PECO Energy Company; ComEd becomes part of a new holding company, Unicom Corporation.
2000: PECO and Unicom merge to form Exelon Corporation.
Address:
10 South Dearborn Street, 37th Floor
Chicago, Illinois 60690-3005
U.S.A.
In October, 2009 Exelon had full or majority ownership of 17 nuclear reactors in 10 nuclear power plants.
Exelon Corporation (Exelon), incorporated in February 1999, is a utility services holding company. It operates through its principal subsidiaries each of which is treated as a segment: Exelon Generation Company, LLC (Generation), Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) and PECO Energy Company (PECO). On December 9, 2010, the Company, through Generation, acquired Exelon Wind, LLC (Exelon Wind), formerly John Deere Renewables, LLC, which is an operator and developer of wind power. Generation acquired 735 megawatts of installed, operating wind capacity located in eight states.
Exelon Generation Company, LLC
Generation is a public utility. Its business consists of the Company’s owned and contracted electric generating facilities, its wholesale energy marketing operations and its retail supply operations. Generation’s three segments include the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and South and West regions. Mid-Atlantic represents Generation’s operations primarily in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland (approximately 36% of capacity). Midwest includes the operations in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota (approximately 46% of capacity). The South and West includes operations primarily in Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Idaho and Oregon (approximately 18% of capacity). Generation’s retail business provides retail electric and gas services as an unregulated retail energy supplier in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. As of December 31, 2010, Generation had ownership interests in 11 nuclear generating stations in service, consisting of 19 units with an aggregate of 17,047 megawatt of capacity. Generation wholly-owns all of its nuclear generating stations, except for Quad Cities Generating Station (75% ownership), Peach Bottom Generating Station (50% ownership) and Salem Generating Station (Salem) (42.59% ownership). Generation’s nuclear generating stations are all operated by Generation, with the exception of the two units at Salem, which are operated by PSEG Nuclear, LLC (PSEG Nuclear).
Generation’s subsidiary includes AmerGen Energy Company, LLC (AmerGen). Through December 31, 2010, Generation has added 101 megawatts of nuclear generation through its uprate program. As of December 31, 2010, Generation owned generation resources with an aggregate net capacity of 25,619 megawatt, including 17,047 megawatt of nuclear capacity. Generation also controlled another 6,139 megawatt of capacity through long-term contracts. As of December 31, 2010, Generation had approximately 54,300 spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies (13,100 tons) stored onsite in SNF pools or dry cask storage, which includes SNF at Zion Station, for which Generation retains ownership. Generation’s wholesale marketing and retail electric supplier operations include the physical delivery and marketing of power obtained through its generation capacity and long-term, intermediate-term and short-term contracts. Generation operates various fossil, hydroelectric and renewable facilities, and maintains ownership interests in several other facilities, including LaPorte, Keystone, Conemaugh and Wyman, which are operated by third parties.
Commonwealth Edison Company
ComEd is a public utility. Its energy delivery business consists of the purchase and regulated retail sale of electricity, and the provision of transmission and distribution services to a diverse base of residential, commercial and industrial customers in northern Illinois, including the City of Chicago. ComEd’s retail service territory has an area of approximately 11,300 square miles. The service territory includes the City of Chicago, an area of about 225 square miles. As of December 31, 2010, ComEd had approximately 3.8 million customers. As of December 31, 2010, there were approximately 66,200 retail customers (primarily commercial and industrial customers), representing approximately 52% of ComEd’s annual retail kilowatt hour sales.
PECO Energy Company
PECO is a is a public utility. Its energy delivery business consists of the purchase and regulated retail sale of electricity and the provision of transmission and distribution services to retail customers in south-eastern Pennsylvania, including the City of Philadelphia, as well as the purchase and regulated retail sale of natural gas. PECO also provides distribution services to retail customers in the Pennsylvania counties surrounding Philadelphia.
PECO’s combined electric and natural gas retail service territory has an area of approximately 2,100 square miles and an estimated population of 3.8 million. PECO provides electric delivery service in an area of approximately 1,900 square miles, with a population of approximately 3.8 million, including approximately 1.5 million in the City of Philadelphia. PECO supplies natural gas service in an area of approximately 1,900 square miles in southeastern Pennsylvania adjacent to the City of Philadelphia, with a population of approximately 2.3 million. PECO delivers electricity to approximately 1.6 million customers and natural gas to approximately 490,000 customers.
Into this bleak picture stepped ComEd's newly appointed CEO, James O'Connor. Beginning in 1980, the ICC granted the utility a series of large rate increases. ComEd began to rebound, and by December 1984 O'Connor was predicting that rates would increase about 2.5 percent a year for three years, level off in 1988, and then stabilize.
In 1986, as ComEd struggled to finance the $7.1 billion building program for the last three of 12 nuclear plants, problems with the company's Braidwood nuclear plant increased its construction cost more than 40 percent. This meant that ComEd would need a 4.8 percent annual increase for 11 years to cover the cost. Many observers felt that ComEd should have canceled or postponed some of its plants in the early 1980s due to underestimated construction costs and overestimated demand.
As a result of overbuilding in its nuclear program, ComEd's generating capacity exceeded average peak demand by 33 percent in 1990 (most utilities maintain a 15 percent surplus). Thus, while many major utilities around the nation were found to be spending $15 to $51 on conservation per customer, ComEd was spending 39 cents per customer, according to a study by a committee of the Chicago City Council.
In 1990, the company's net income fell to $128 million, or 22 cents per share, from the previous year's $693 million, or $2.83 per share, largely because of court-ordered refunds and rate rollbacks. Also in 1990, at a time when customers were growing increasingly unhappy with paying some of the nation's highest rates, the utility's franchise term with the city of Chicago was due to expire. A coalition of community and environmental groups had formed in 1988 to pressure the city to stir up public debate over the city's electricity options. These amounted to a renegotiated franchise or municipal acquisition. Meanwhile, ComEd waged an advertising campaign to tout the quality of its service.
In the summer of 1990, two major substation fires caused 60,000 customers to lose power for up to three days. The city postponed its decision on the franchise issue to allow more time to study the utility's reliability. Negotiations on a new franchise concluded in 1991, and ComEd was granted a 29-year contract.
The company's costs were still high, and with a series of lawsuits on the verge of settlement ComEd cut its dividend in 1992 by a whopping 47 percent. A year later, the company agreed to the biggest refund in utility industry history. Over the next 12 months, ComEd would pay back $1.34 billion to its customers, primarily because it had passed the costs of building unnecessary nuclear plants on to them. A rate reduction of $339 million was also effected.
In 1994, ComEd became part of a newly created holding company, Unicom Corporation. The company had recently been granted legislative approval to create an unregulated energy subsidiary, and the new corporate structure was intended to facilitate this. A subsidiary, Unicom Thermal, was also formed to develop new types of cooling systems to take advantage of laws mandating reductions in ozone-depleting cooling agents. Other subsidiaries would become involved in energy consulting and the manufacture of power generators, though revenues from these operations were small.
Troubles with the company's nuclear power plants continued to bring down profits, and in 1995 a 16 percent reduction in the work force was announced. Moreover, ComEd was being fined regularly by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for incidents ranging from workers planting a small quantity of radioactive material in a coworker's pocket, to an employee being allowed to work while visibly drunk. By the mid-1990s only half of the company's reactors were typically online, with the Zion plant the most seriously troubled. Other problems arose when the company announced the possibility of "rolling blackouts" when peak energy demands exceeded production capacity. Critics pointed out that the company was still charging one of the highest rates for power in the country, yet was openly resisting buying extra electricity during the peak summer cooling season to keep its customers supplied with power.
In January 1998, ComEd finally moved to permanently close its Zion plant, and the following month CEO O'Connor stepped down. His successor was 52-year old John W. Rowe, former CEO of New England Electric System and a lawyer with a strong background in nuclear power issues. Rowe's challenge was not only to bring up the company's ailing bottom line but to develop a strategy for the impending power industry deregulation that Illinois legislators had enacted. This would finally open up the power marketplace to all comers, with business customers available in 1999 and residential users to follow in 2002. Rowe's strategy, which he had developed in his years with New England Electric, was to focus more on delivery of power than production, opening the door to purchasing energy from outside providers. To that end he sold 16 of ComEd's non-nuclear plants for $4.8 billion in early 1999, while the company also sought approval of a $3.4 billion bond issue. He also announced the company's intention to purchase more energy industry service companies, such as heating and air conditioning contractors. Perhaps his boldest gesture was to publicly admit that ComEd's long-time nuclear power strategy had been a mistake.
The 2000 Merger
Both PECO and Unicom were facing challenges related to deregulation when they announced their merger in September 1999. For instance, The Philadelphia Business Journal reported in July 1999 that PECO had lost over 34 percent of its customer load since the market had opened for competition in January. Unicom's ComEd was also experiencing a rash of problems caused by its out-of-date wires, cables, and transformers in the Chicago area. The region experienced power outages from July through August and the firm was forced to spend $20 million to remedy the situation.
Management of both companies believed that in order to operate in the highly competitive environment, it was necessary to evolve from a stand-alone regional utility concern into a large, formidable industry player. As such, PECO and Unicom eyed the merger of equals as a unique opportunity to strengthen their foothold on the U.S. utilities industry. The proposed deal was met with some opposition--the two companies seemed like an odd fit due to PECO's strategy of acquiring nuclear power plants and Unicom's focus on electricity delivery rather than power generation. However, both Rowe and McNeill believed that together, the combined company would be a huge force in both generation and distribution. Rowe claimed in a 1999 United Press International article that the merger would create "a base from which we will build a leading energy delivery business and establish ourselves as a significant competitor in the emerging retail energy marketplace."
Indeed, the combined entity would operate as one of the largest utility firms in the United States, controlling nearly 20 percent of the country's nuclear generation market and serving approximately five million customers. The $31.8 billion merger was officially completed in October 2000. Operating under the new name Exelon Corporation, the company had three main business divisions, including Exelon Generation, which included its nuclear, fossil, and hydro fleet operations, as well as a wholesale marketing division; Exelon Energy Deliver, which included the electricity and gas retail operations of both ComEd and PECO Energy; and Exelon Enterprises, a unit that included the company's utility and energy services that catered to businesses.
Exelon's first year of operation proved to be rocky. The firm's aggressive expansion of its Enterprises business group--a group that focused on forays into new ventures, especially in the telecommunications market--failed to pay off. The company laid off over 1,500 employees in that division as it reported losses through 2002. Then, in March 2002, co-CEO McNeill announced his resignation amid rumors that he was unable to see eye-to-eye with Rowe on the expansion direction of the company. McNeill, ready to pursue a large acquisition to bolster Exelon's generating capacity, was challenged by Rowe, who felt that a purchase of a mid-sized utility offering both generation and distribution would best fit Exelon's portfolio. In the end, McNeill stepped down as both an executive and director of the firm, leaving Rowe at the helm.
By February 2002, electricity prices were down nearly 30 percent and the power generation sector of the industry was experiencing an over supply. In fact, the power generation industry overall was faltering due to the public collapse of Enron Corporation, a disaster that left consumers leery of the competitive energy market. To make matters worse, Exelon was hit by a class action law suit in May 2002 by shareholders that claimed the company reported misleading statements regarding its financial position in April through September 2001. The suit claimed that Exelon failed to reveal significant information regarding the losses experienced by its Enterprises group. While the company claimed that it would meet its projected $4.50 per share earnings for 2001, it instead secured consolidated earnings of $4.43 per share.
Despite these challenges, Exelon management was confident that the company would continue to grow as a leading utility concern. With a long-standing history behind it, the newly formed entity was indeed prepared to handle the obstacles brought on by the changing marketplace. How the company chose to handle these obstacles however, remained to be seen.
Principal Subsidiaries: Commonwealth Edison Company; PECO Energy Company
Principal Divisions: Exelon Energy Delivery Company, LLC; Exelon Generation Company, LLC; Exelon Ventures Company, LLC.
Principal Competitors: Ameren Corporation; Dynegy Inc.; PPL Corporation.
OVERALL
Beta: 0.63
Market Cap (Mil.): $27,640.81
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 662.21
Annual Dividend: 2.10
Yield (%): 5.03
FINANCIALS
EXC.N Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 11.16 22.42 21.65
EPS (TTM): -9.73 -- --
ROI: 5.33 0.97 1.26
ROE: 18.13 2.22 2.82
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1902 as Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) and 1907 as The Commonwealth Edison Co., Inc. (Unicom)
Employees: 29,200
Sales: $15.1 billion (2001)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol: EXC
NAIC: 221122 Electric Power Distribution; 221113 Nuclear Electric Power Generation; 221112 Fossil Fuel Electric Power Generation; 551112 Offices of Other Holding Companies
Key Dates:
1902: The Philadelphia Electric Company (PE) is incorporated.
1907: Samuel Insull merges Commonwealth Electric Company and Chicago Edison Company to form Commonwealth Edison (ComEd).
1927: The Pennsylvania-New Jersey Interconnection is created.
1929: PE merges with United Gas Improvement Company.
1932: Banks take over Insull's MWU holding company; Insull is forced to resign amid fraud and embezzlement charges.
1943: PE becomes an independent company once again.
1953: The Public Service Company of Northern Illinois merges with ComEd.
1960: ComEd operates the nation's first privately financed commercial nuclear power station.
1968: Regulatory delays prevent the completion of PE nuclear power plants in Limerick.
1974: ComEd acquires Cotter Corporation.
1980: ComEd's earnings per share sink to their lowest level in 15 years.
1987: PE's earnings fall after the Public Utilities Commission refuses to allow a rate hike.
1994: PE adopts the name PECO Energy Company; ComEd becomes part of a new holding company, Unicom Corporation.
2000: PECO and Unicom merge to form Exelon Corporation.
Address:
10 South Dearborn Street, 37th Floor
Chicago, Illinois 60690-3005
U.S.A.