Duke Energy DUK

Reference table

1. The business, and today's segment table

Duke Energy is a Delaware-incorporated utility holding company with approximately 26,441 employees and Harry K. Sideris as chief executive. 779,702,193 shares of $0.001-par common stock were outstanding at 2026-07-31, per the 10-Q filed today.

Two reportable segments plus Other, from today's 10-Q. The June-quarter table reconciles exactly to the reported revenue line:

Two things to read off this table.

First, the segment block reconciles to the dollar — $7,159M + $428M + $5M = $7,592M, exactly the revenue in inc_q. After the segment failures catalogued across this programme, a same-day filing whose segment table ties exactly to the income statement is worth recording as clean. It also demonstrates precisely what the vendor's own seg_prod block gets wrong: see Section 6, where the fiscal-2025 entry contains nothing but a single "Other Revenues" line of $1,651M against $32,237M of revenue.

Second, Electric Utilities and Infrastructure is the company. $7,159M of $7,592M of unaffiliated revenue — 94.3% — and $1,271M of $1,281M of reportable segment income. Gas Utilities and Infrastructure contributed $10 million of segment income in the quarter. The "Other" line's $313 million of interest expense against a $204 million loss is the holding-company debt burden, and it is a third of the group's total interest cost.

The June quarter also carried the first accounting effect of the rate settlement: an "after tax amount of $39 million, net of $12 million tax benefit, recorded at Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress within Impairment of assets and other charges... as a result of Duke Energy Carolinas' North Carolina rate case settlements." That is $51 million pre-tax, part of the approximately $40 million of charges the company said it expected to recognise in 2026 and to treat as special items.

The first-half figures, also from today's 10-Q, carry the Piedmont Tennessee gain: Electric segment income $2,525M, Gas segment income $542M (inflated by $402M within "Other", the Piedmont gain), Other −$467M, total $3,067M − $467M = $2,600M, plus $13M of discontinued operations = $2,613M available to common, and net income of $2,722M. First-half capital expenditure was $8,240M and segment assets at 2026-06-30 were $201,091M.

The North Carolina rate case — settled in full, 2026-07-17

This is the most important thing that has happened to Duke Energy this year and none of it is in the vendor payload. Three 8-Ks in eleven days document it.

From the 8-K filed 2026-07-17:

> "On July 17, 2026, DEC and the Public Staff, as well as other intervening parties... filed a Comprehensive Revenue Requirement Settlement ('Comprehensive Settlement') with the NCUC resolving all remaining revenue requirement issues in the case... The Comprehensive Settlement resolves all remaining revenue requirement issues between the Company and the Intervening Parties in the case, including agreement on 9.8% ROE and 53% equity component in the capital structure and various accounting and plant items."

The terms, verbatim from the same filing:

Two earlier stipulations fed into it: a Partial Settlement filed 2026-07-02 resolving payroll, bad debt, coal-ash amortisation, transmission cost allocation and discrete plant items; and a Storm Cost Stipulation filed 2026-07-06 resolving the treatment of Hurricane Helene and Winter Storm Fern costs and withdrawing the request for storm reserve funding, with Winter Storm Fern removed from the case to pursue future securitisation.

What this is worth, stated plainly. A settled rate case at a 9.8% allowed return on a 53% equity layer is a five-year visibility grant. It converts the single largest source of uncertainty in a utility's earnings — what the regulator will let it earn — into a known number. It does not raise the growth rate; the 7% consensus already assumes something like this. What it does is remove the left tail, and that is what a 4-out-of-10 downside-risk score reflects. The large-load tariff proceeding is the one item in the settlement with genuine upside optionality and it is unresolved.

The Piedmont Tennessee sale and the equity programme

From today's 10-Q:

> "On March 16, 2026, the TPUC approved the transaction and Piedmont closed on the sale on March 31, 2026. Piedmont received proceeds of approximately $2.5 billion from the sale, subject to post-closing adjustments, which were partially used for debt reduction at Piedmont, as well as to efficiently fund Duke Energy's capital plan, primarily by displacing the issuance of common equity in the near term."

Pretax gains of $368 million (Duke Energy) and $652 million (Piedmont) were recorded in the first six months of 2026. The buyer is Spire Inc.

And the equity programme it partly displaces:

> "In March 2026, Duke Energy filed a prospectus supplement and executed an Equity Distribution Agreement (EDA) under which it may sell up to $6 billion of its common stock through an at-the-market (ATM) offering program, including an equity forward sales component... through September 2028."

Four forward tranches were priced in the first half of 2026:

Note tranche 3's initial forward price of $124.30 — exactly today's closing price. 4,690,908 shares is 0.60% of the 779.7 million outstanding, priced in six months, with a $6 billion facility running to September 2028. This is the structural feature that most distinguishes Duke Energy from every other name in this batch: it is not returning capital, it is raising it, and the dilution is a direct deduction from the per-share growth the consensus assumes.

2. The earnings record

Trailing four quarters of adjusted EPS: $1.81 + $1.50 + $1.93 + $1.43 = $6.67. At $124.30 that is 18.6x trailing, and the vendor's own priceToEarningsRatioTTM of 18.664 implies $6.660 — a 0.2% agreement.

Five consecutive beats, four of them small and today's the largest. For a company whose earnings are a regulated return on an asset base, small consistent beats are the expected pattern: the variance comes from weather, storm costs and timing rather than from operations.

Annual revenue and GAAP earnings:

Free cash flow has been negative in three of the last four fiscal years, and in the one positive year it was $48 million on $30 billion of revenue. This is not a warning sign; it is the model. But it must be understood before any cash-flow-based valuation is attempted — and Section 6 documents that the vendor's data file gets it exactly backwards.

3. Balance sheet and capital structure

Leverage is high and it is normal for the sector. Total debt of $90,869M against trailing EBITDA of approximately $16,189M (the sum of the four quarterly inc_q EBITDA figures) is roughly 5.6x, matching the vendor's netDebtToEBITDATTM of 5.594x. For a regulated utility with a settled rate case and an approved capital structure containing a 53% equity component, that is within normal range — the metric credit agencies actually use is funds from operations to debt, which this payload does not contain.

The FY2025 balance-sheet row contains a severe classification error that must be flagged before it is used: capitalLeaseObligations reads $80,108,000,000 and longTermDebt reads $1,033,000,000, against $957M and $76,340M respectively a year earlier. The $80.1 billion is plainly long-term debt filed in the wrong field. Total debt survives — $9,728M + $1,033M + $80,108M = $90,869M — but the composition is inverted. Detail in Section 6.

Interest expense from today's 10-Q: $957 million in the June quarter and $1,925 million for the half, of which $313 million in the quarter sits in the "Other" (holding-company) segment. On an annualised basis that is roughly $3.9 billion of interest against approximately $16.2 billion of EBITDA — coverage of about 4.2x on that basis, against the vendor's interestCoverageRatioTTM of 2.44x computed on EBIT.

Capital return, and it runs both ways. The dividend is $4.26 annually — a 3.43% yield and a 63.9% payout on trailing adjusted EPS of $6.67. commonStockRepurchased is ZERO in all four years of cf_a, which is correct: Duke Energy does not buy back stock, it sells it. With 4,690,908 shares priced through ATM forwards in the first half of 2026 alone against 779.7 million outstanding, net shareholder yield is the 3.43% dividend less roughly 1.2% of annualised dilution — call it 2.2%.

4. Valuation — priced in or room?

At $124.30 (market capitalisation $96.90B, 779,702,193 shares per today's 10-Q):

Estimate coverage is excellent and the dispersion is the lowest in this batch. Fourteen analysts on both FY2026 and FY2027 adjusted EPS, nine on FY2028. The FY2027 range is $7.119 to $7.219 — a 1.4% spread. For comparison, the equivalent spread on Capital One in this same batch is 9.7% and on KKR 10.3%. A 1.4% spread means the street is not forecasting; it is arithmetic on an approved rate base, and it means there is essentially no scope for a positive earnings surprise to change the valuation. The FY2029 and FY2030 rows rest on 3 analysts each and are excluded from every conclusion.

est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg carry the fixed-ratio fabrication signature and are rejected. In FY2026, FY2027, FY2028, FY2029 and FY2030 alike, ebitdaAvg is exactly 52.001% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg is exactly 35.101%. Five consecutive years to three decimal places is not a forecast. They are also implausible in level: the fabricated FY2026 EBITDA margin of 52.0% compares with an actual FY2025 margin of 48.6% from inc_a, so the rows are directionally plausible and mechanically fabricated at the same time — which is the more dangerous kind. All forward valuation uses epsAvg, validated against earn_cal actuals (FY2025 estimate $6.311 against a reported GAAP EPS of $6.31).

Enterprise value is usable here and needs a small correction. The vendor prints enterpriseValueTTM of $187,469M. It omits $1,177M of noncontrolling interests and $973M of preferred stock. Corrected enterprise value is approximately $189,619M, 1.1% higher, and EV/EBITDA moves from 11.58x to approximately 11.7x. This is the SPGI NCI-omission class in its mildest form — the SPGI case was 3.9% and KKR elsewhere in this batch is 35.6% — but it is the same error and it is recorded. No lease double-count of the T or TJX class was found: total debt reconciles exactly to the sum of its three components in both fiscal years.

Peer context is the best in this batch. All ten vendor peers — AEP, Dominion, DTE, Entergy, Exelon, National Grid, PSEG, Southern, WEC and Xcel — are regulated utilities, and Southern Company at $107.3 billion is the closest comparable by size. We draw no cross-multiple because this file contains no equivalent forward-EPS data for the peers, and inventing one would be a fabrication.

4a. What today's price assumes (the inversion)

At $124.30 — 18.6x FY2026 consensus adjusted EPS, 17.3x FY2027, 3.43% dividend yield — the price embeds:

• Adjusted EPS reaches $6.701 in 2026 and $7.169 in 2027. (Consensus; 14 analysts each, FY2027 range only 1.4% wide.) The first half of 2026 delivered $3.36 ($1.93 + $1.43), so FY2026 needs $3.34 in the second half — the September guide of $1.93 plus roughly $1.41 in the December quarter. This is about as low-variance a forecast as equity research produces.
• The North Carolina Utilities Commission approves the Stipulations broadly as filed, with Year 1 rates effective by 2027-01-01. (Filing-disclosed; approval outstanding.) The evidentiary hearing commenced 2026-07-07 and was in progress at the time of today's 10-Q. A settlement rejected or materially conditioned would remove the visibility that makes a 17.3x multiple defensible.
• The capital plan continues at roughly $16 billion a year and is financed without a bad equity print. (Our number, annualising the 10-Q's $8,240M half-year figure.) This is the most fragile assumption in the price. Duke Energy has not generated positive free cash flow in three of the last four years; the plan requires continuous access to both debt and equity markets; and the $6 billion ATM programme running to September 2028 is the mechanism. A financing environment that forces equity issuance at a materially lower price transfers value directly from existing shareholders to the capital plan.
• The market keeps paying roughly 17-19x forward earnings. (Our number.) At 15x FY2027E the stock is $108; at 20x it is $143. Regulated utilities have occupied a 15-20x forward band for most of the last decade, and 17.3x is squarely in the middle of it.
• Data-centre load growth arrives at something like the projected scale. (Company risk factor; the large-load tariff proceeding is the mechanism.) The 10-Q's forward-looking-statements section warns specifically of "lower than anticipated load growth, particularly if usage of electricity by data centers is less than currently projected." The 7% growth trajectory does not obviously require it; anything above 7% does.

4b. The return bridge (why the multiple moves)

Expected return over the next twelve months decomposes as: adjusted EPS growth (+7.0%, from FY2026E $6.701 to FY2027E $7.169) + multiple drift (roughly HELD to mildly compressed, 18.6x on the forward year moving to about 18.0x, −3%) + net shareholder yield (+3.43% dividend less roughly 1.2% of annualised ATM dilution ≈ +2.2%) ≈ +6% to +7%.

Our base assumes the multiple essentially holds, and there is no case for assuming otherwise. This is not a business whose multiple should re-rate: its return on equity is set by commissions at 9.8%, its growth is set by approved capital, and its risk profile has just improved by exactly the amount a settlement improves it — which is real but not re-rating-scale. We are neither underwriting expansion nor forecasting compression.

Note what this makes the return: almost all of it is earnings growth and dividend, and roughly a third of the dividend is given back in dilution. That is a defensible 6-7% total return for a low-beta asset with a settled regulatory outlook. It is not 15%, and no honest arithmetic on this file produces 15%.

If the multiple compressed to 15x FY2027E the price is $108 (−13.5%). If it expanded to 20x, $143 (+15.4%).

4c. Variant perception (where we differ, what would surprise)

• We are 5.8% BELOW the street and, unusually, below its LOWEST published target. Our $129 against a consensus $136.89, a median $137, a high of $140 and a low of $134. Not one covering analyst has a target below $134, which is 7.8% above the current price. That is a remarkable degree of agreement that a utility trading at 17.3x its second forward year is worth 19.1x. We think 18x is the defensible number and we are content to sit outside the published range on the low side and say so.
• We have no meaningful variant perception on the earnings, and we say so plainly. Fourteen analysts agree on FY2027 within 1.4%. There is no informational edge to be had in forecasting a regulated return on an approved rate base, and this dive does not pretend to one. What we are doing is applying a lower multiple to the same number. A no-edge name defaults toward Hold, and this is the second clean example of that in this batch.
• We think the free-cash-flow position is systematically under-weighted, and the vendor data is the reason. The payload reports a freeCashFlowYieldTTM of 14.31% and a priceToFreeCashFlowRatioTTM of 6.99x for a company that generated NEGATIVE $1,672 million of free cash flow in fiscal 2025. Section 6 shows the arithmetic: the vendor ADDED capex instead of subtracting it, on a capex figure 84% too small. Any screen ranking utilities on free-cash-flow yield will place Duke Energy near the top of the universe, and the true figure is negative. That is a genuine, checkable divergence between what the data says and what the filing says, and it is the most consequential finding in this dive.
• Positive surprise that would force a re-rate: a large-load tariff concluded on terms that visibly accelerate rate-base growth above the 7% trajectory — the settlement commits the parties to complete that proceeding before new rates take effect, so a resolution is due within months. Watchable event: the NCUC's large-load tariff order. Second: NCUC approval of the Stipulations as filed with Year 1 rates effective 2027-01-01, which would confirm the whole settlement.
• Negative surprise that would break the thesis: the NCUC materially conditioning or rejecting the Stipulations; an ATM tranche priced well below $120, which would signal financing stress and dilute harder; a storm season requiring costs beyond the just-settled Helene and Fern treatment; the Duke Energy Progress / Duke Energy Carolinas combination failing to complete by its 2027-01-01 target or being approved with costly conditions, which intervenors in both Carolinas have sought; or data-centre load growth disappointing, which the company itself names as a risk.

Synthos fair values

All three anchors are multiples of the FY2027 consensus adjusted EPS distribution (mean $7.169, low $7.119, high $7.219, 14 analysts).

• Bear ~$107 — 15.0x the FY2027 consensus LOW of $7.119, cross-checked at 16.0x FY2026E. 6.1% BELOW the 52-week low of $114.00. The scenario: the NCUC conditions or rejects the Stipulations, the capital plan requires heavier equity issuance at worse prices, storm costs recur, data-centre load disappoints, and the multiple returns to the bottom of the sector band. −13.9%.
• Base ~$129 — 18.0x the FY2027 consensus MEAN of $7.169, cross-checked at 19.3x FY2026E and 16.8x FY2028E, and approximately 1.87x derived common book. Sensitivity, stated openly: 17.3x — the current multiple held flat — gives $124, which is spot; 19x gives $136, which is the street. The scenario: the settlement is approved, earnings grow 7%, the dividend is paid, the ATM runs at its current pace, and the multiple does not move. +3.8%.
• Bull ~$148 — 20.5x the FY2027 consensus HIGH of $7.219, cross-checked at 19.3x FY2028E. 10.9% above the 52-week high of $133.46. The scenario: the large-load tariff produces visible rate-base acceleration, the Progress/Carolinas combination delivers the claimed cost savings, rates fall and utility multiples expand with them. +19.1%.

Base is 3.8% above spot; asymmetry roughly 1.37:1 (13.9% down, 19.1% up), plus a 3.43% dividend less roughly 1.2% of dilution. A base case inside 4% and a payoff ratio under 1.5:1 is a fairly valued asset. This is a Hold, and the case for owning it is the dividend and the low beta, not the price.

5. Knowledge base — one claim, and Duke fails its own test

Raw hits: 1. Entity matches: 1. Used: 1. Discarded: 0.

The sweep ran case-sensitive entity tokens DUK and Duke Energy, plus case-sensitive free-text patterns for both, across all 51,928 distilled claims. It returned exactly one claim.

> 2026-01-28 · bullish · conviction 70 · skill 0.7 · horizon: principle · entities: PG, JNJ, KO, CL, NEE, DUK · categories: pricing power, dividend aristocrats · channel: ray_dalio · speaker: uncertain · speaker_role: independent

> "Allocate 30-35% to businesses with pricing power that raise prices faster than inflation — dividend aristocrats in staples (PG, KO, CL), utilities (NEE, DUK) and healthcare (JNJ), payout below 60%."

Three observations, and the second is the substantive one.

First, this is not a view on Duke Energy. It is a portfolio-construction principle that names six companies across three sectors as examples of a category. Treating it as name-level conviction on this security would be inflation of exactly the kind this programme exists to avoid. It is scored as one claim, breadth 1, net conviction negligible-positive.

Second — and this is the finding — DUKE ENERGY FAILS THE CLAIM'S OWN SCREEN. The rule specifies "payout below 60%." Duke Energy's dividend of $4.26 against trailing adjusted earnings of $6.67 is a 63.9% payout. On the vendor's dividendPerShareTTM of $4.26 and netIncomePerShareTTM of $6.736 it is 63.2%. Either way, Duke Energy is above the threshold the claim itself sets, and a screen built from the claim would exclude it. We report that rather than counting the claim as supportive.

Third, the attribution is weak on the programme's own terms. The claim carries speaker: uncertain — not a named speaker, and not null either — with speaker_role: independent, and a skill weight of 0.7, the lowest band in the store. Under the standing finding that speaker attribution is unreliable, we do not treat the named channel slug as an established attribution of this specific statement, and we weight the claim accordingly.

Homograph check — run and clean. "DUK" is a three-letter ticker with obvious collision potential and "Duke" is a common proper noun (a university, a title, a name). The case-sensitive sweep on "Duke Energy" and word-bounded "DUK" produced exactly one hit and no false positives, so nothing was discarded. A looser sweep on "Duke" alone would have been dominated by the university and by the aristocratic title, and it was not run.

Conclusion. The Synthos knowledge base has effectively nothing to say about Duke Energy. One claim, an allocation principle, low skill weight, uncertain speaker, and Duke fails its own stated screen. This dive is built on the filings and the vendor payload, and that limitation is stated rather than papered over with adjacent macro claims about utilities or interest rates, none of which name this company.

6. Data integrity — what we rejected and why

Eight findings. Two are severe: a free-cash-flow calculation with a sign error compounding a magnitude error, and an $80 billion debt line filed under the wrong caption. Against those, the filing archive for this name is the best in this batch and the segment table in today's 10-Q reconciles exactly.

1. freeCashFlow in the TTM block is computed by ADDING capital expenditure instead of subtracting it, on a capex figure 84% too small — REJECTED, and this is the most consequential finding in the dive. The arithmetic is visible in three fields of ratios_ttm:

$14.870 + $2.933 = $17.803. The vendor added. Free cash flow per share should be operating cash flow less capital expenditure. And the capex figure itself is wrong by an order of magnitude: cf_a reports FY2025 capitalExpenditure of $14,024 million, which on 779.7 million shares is $17.99 per share, not $2.93 — an 84% understatement. Today's 10-Q independently confirms the scale: first-half 2026 capital expenditure was $8,240 million, an annualised run rate near $16.5 billion.

Correcting both errors: TTM free cash flow per share is approximately $14.87 − $18.00 = MINUS $3.13, and free cash flow is NEGATIVE. The vendor's derived figures are consequently void:

This is the COP defect class inverted and amplified. On COP the vendor understated capex by 76% and turned a 5.04% free-cash-flow yield into 10.71%; here the understatement is 84% AND the sign is wrong, turning a negative free-cash-flow business into a 14.31% yield — which would rank Duke Energy near the top of any free-cash-flow screen in the utility universe. The sanity check that catches it is the one the contract prescribes: capex of $2.93 per share against depreciation and amortisation of $6,324 million (roughly $8.11 per share) is implausible for a utility, and the cash-flow statement settles it. No cash-flow-based measure from this file is used anywhere in this dive.

2. bal_a files $80,108 million of long-term debt under capitalLeaseObligations and reports longTermDebt of $1,033 million — REJECTED as a composition, retained as a total. The fiscal-2025 row reads shortTermDebt $9,728M, longTermDebt $1,033M, capitalLeaseObligations $80,108M, totalDebt $90,869M. The prior year reads $7,933M, $76,340M and $957M. A company does not go from $957 million to $80,108 million of finance leases in one year while its long-term debt falls from $76,340 million to $1,033 million. The two fields are transposed. Total debt survives — the three components sum exactly to $90,869M — and net debt of $90,624M is therefore usable. But longTermDebtToCapitalRatioTTM of 0.600, debtToCapitalRatioTTM of 0.625 and any analysis of debt maturity or lease exposure built on this row is not. Note the direction: this is the opposite of the T and TJX lease errors, where operating leases were double-counted INTO debt; here real debt has been miscounted AS leases, and the total is unaffected.

3. dividendPayoutRatioTTM reads 0.0156 — a 1.56% payout — for a company paying $4.26 on $6.67 of earnings. The correct figure is 63.9%, so the vendor understates it by a factor of 41. The dividendYieldTTM of 3.427% is correct ($4.26 ÷ $124.30 = 3.427%), so only the payout field is broken. This matters here more than it usually would, because the one knowledge-base claim on this name screens on a payout below 60% — and a reader using the vendor's 1.56% would conclude Duke passes comfortably when in fact it fails.

4. seg_prod loses BOTH reportable segments in fiscal 2025 — REJECTED. The FY2025 entry contains a single line: "Other Revenues $1,651,000,000", against reported revenue of $32,237 million — 5.1%. The FY2024 entry is nearly complete (Electric Utilities and Infrastructure $26,812M + Gas Utilities and Infrastructure $2,320M = $29,132M against $30,357M, 96.0%, missing only the Other line). So the block goes from 96% coverage to 5% coverage in consecutive years, which is the HWM defect class — losing segments between years. Today's 10-Q supplies the correct structure and it reconciles exactly ($7,159M + $428M + $5M = $7,592M for the June quarter). All segment figures in this dive come from the 10-Q. The pre-2016 entries are additionally unusable, mixing "Total Reportable Segments" totals with individual segments in a way that would double-count if summed (the FY2012 entry contains both "Total Reportable Segments $9,395M" and "Franchised Electric $9,395M").

5. seg_geo stops at fiscal 2023 — no geographic data for FY2024 or FY2025. The FY2023 entry reads United States $29,060,000,000, which reconciles exactly to inc_a FY2023 revenue of $29,060,000,000 — a clean 100% single-geography disclosure, and worth recording as correct for the year it covers. It is simply two years stale. Duke Energy is a wholly domestic utility, so the missing years carry no analytical cost, and we say that rather than treating the gap as material.

6. est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg carry the fixed-ratio fabrication signature — REJECTED. ebitdaAvg is exactly 52.001% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg exactly 35.101% in FY2026, FY2027, FY2028, FY2029 and FY2030 alike — five consecutive years. They are dangerous precisely because they are plausible in level: the fabricated 52.0% EBITDA margin sits close to the actual FY2025 margin of 48.6% from inc_a, so nothing looks obviously wrong until the ratio is computed across years. All forward valuation uses epsAvg, which is independently validated — the FY2025 estimate of $6.311 against a reported GAAP EPS of $6.31.

7. enterpriseValueTTM omits $1,177M of noncontrolling interests and $973M of preferred stock — a 1.1% understatement. Corrected enterprise value is approximately $189,619M and EV/EBITDA moves from the vendor's 11.58x to approximately 11.7x. The mildest instance of this defect class in the batch (SPGI 3.9%, KKR 35.6%), and it is recorded and corrected.

8. bookValuePerShareTTM and shareholdersEquityPerShareTTM do not deduct the $973M of preferred stock, and the two fields use different definitions of equity. The vendor reports bookValuePerShareTTM of $72.995 and shareholdersEquityPerShareTTM of $70.284 — a $2.71 difference which, at 779.7 million shares, is $2,113M, almost exactly the $1,177M of NCI plus $973M of preferred. So bookValuePerShareTTM is total equity including both, and shareholdersEquityPerShareTTM is total stockholders' equity including preferred but excluding NCI. priceToBookRatioTTM of 1.7685 is computed against the latter. Deducting the preferred gives common book value of approximately $69.03 per share and a price-to-book of approximately 1.80x, which is what this dive uses. A modest correction relative to the same defect on USB and KKR elsewhere in this batch.

Also checked and recorded, and mostly clean. inc_q passed the two-basis test — all nine quarters are on one basis and the June-quarter figure of $7,592M matches today's 10-Q segment table to the dollar. earn_cal passed the mixed-basis test — all five actual-versus-estimate pairs are on the adjusted-EPS basis and the trailing sum of $6.67 reconciles to priceToEarningsRatioTTM's implied $6.660 within 0.2%. The share count is exact: the 10-Q states 779,702,193 shares outstanding at 2026-07-31 against 779,596,217 implied by market capitalisation ÷ price — a 0.014% difference. quote.yearHigh/yearLow ($134.49 / $113.90) against tech.hi52/lo52 ($133.46 / $114.00) — a 0.8% and 0.1% discrepancy; tech is used throughout. One definitional note rather than an error: inc_q reports Q2 2026 net income of $1,092M, while today's 10-Q shows segment income of $1,077M and net income of $1,145M. All three are correct at different levels — $1,145M total, less $53M of NCI equals $1,092M attributable to Duke Energy Corporation, less $15M of preferred dividends equals $1,077M available to common. The vendor uses the middle definition. We use the filing's $1,077M where a per-common-share figure is implied and say which.

Vendor composite rating — noted, low weight. B+ / 3 overall, with a discounted-cash-flow sub-score of 4 out of 5. That sub-score is built on the free-cash-flow figure destroyed in finding 1 and carries no weight. The debt-to-equity sub-score of 2 penalises a regulated utility for having the capital structure its regulator approves.

Non-equity tripwire — checked and passed. DUK is common stock, $0.001 par value, NYSE-listed, 779,702,193 shares outstanding per the 10-Q cover page. Price of $124.30 is not par-like; beta is 0.371, the lowest in this batch; the dividend is variable; volume was 3.91M shares (~$486M of turnover); the 52-week band of $114.00 to $133.46 is a 17% range. Note the separately-outstanding Series A Cumulative Redeemable Perpetual Preferred Stock with a $25 liquidation preference per depositary share, which is NOT this security. This is common equity.

7. Technicals

• Price $124.30. −6.9% from the 52-week high of $133.46; +9.0% above the 52-week low of $114.00. Position within the annual range: 53rd percentile — essentially the midpoint.
• Below BOTH moving averages, marginally: −1.0% below a 50-day average of $125.56; −0.3% below a 200-day average of $124.64, with the two averages within 0.7% of each other.
• RSI 49.87 and MACD −0.012. Both are as close to their neutral values as this programme has recorded on any name. There is no trend here to lean on in either direction.
• Maximum drawdown from peak over the trailing year: −6.9% — the shallowest in this batch by a factor of two. For context, KKR's is −35.2% and MCK's is −16.6%.
• Relative performance: 3-month −2.5% against SPY +7.6% and QQQ +7.7%; 6-month +4.0% against SPY +11.1%; 12-month +1.1% against SPY +24.3% and QQQ +30.8% — a 23-point deficit over twelve months. But the shape is different from KKR's: this is not a de-rating, it is a low-beta asset being left behind by a rising market. Adjusted earnings grew roughly 6% over the same period and the multiple is essentially where it was.
• Sentiment: 0 strong buy, 13 buy, 19 hold, 0 sell across 32 analysts — the only name in this batch with a majority at hold and a vendor consensus of "Hold." Target $136.89 (+10.1%), median $137, high $140 (+12.6%), low $134 — 7.8% ABOVE spot. The $134-to-$140 band is a 4.5% spread, the tightest in this batch, and our $129 sits BELOW the lowest published target.

Today's move and what it does to the entry

DUK closed 2026-08-04 at $124.30, up $0.02 — one and a half basis points — from $124.28. It opened at $123.51, traded $121.799 to $124.87, and closed within 0.5% of the day high on 3.91M shares. This was the day of the second-quarter earnings release: the 8-K was furnished and the 10-Q filed, both dated 2026-08-04, and adjusted EPS beat consensus by 10.0%.

The honest read: a 10% earnings beat moved this stock two cents, and that is the most informative fact in this section. For a regulated utility, quarterly earnings are close to irrelevant to valuation — the variables that matter are the allowed return, the rate base, the capital plan and the discount rate. The rate case settled three weeks ago and the market did not move on that either.

What that means for the entry: there is no timing edge available here, in either direction. The stock sits at the midpoint of a 17% annual range, on both moving averages, with RSI at 50 and MACD at zero. A Hold verdict on a stock this inert is not a market call; it is a statement that at $124.30 you are paid 3.43% to own a 7% grower at 17.3x, and that the number at which that becomes interesting is lower. Ours is $107.

8. Insiders — eight transactions, none of them a signal

Eight transactions, one open-market sale, no open-market purchases, and six of the eight are plan mechanics.

The reading, and it is short because there is little to read. Four of the eight are Director Savings Plan restricted-stock-unit deferrals at zero cost — deferred director compensation, not a decision. Two are Executive Savings Plan discretionary allocations by Alexander Weintraub, the Chief Customer Officer, which are 401(k)-style plan elections rather than open-market purchases despite one carrying a $123.81 price. One is a gift by the board Chair, which is estate planning.

That leaves one genuine transaction: Louis E. Renjel, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive of Duke Energy Florida and the Midwest, sold 3,500 shares at $125.15 on 2026-05-11, retaining 21,415 — a 14.0% reduction. It is a modest sale by one of several segment executives, at a price 0.7% above today's, and it is the only directional item in the file.

What the file does not contain: any transaction by Harry K. Sideris, the chief executive, or by the chief financial officer, in either direction. On a company that settled its largest rate case in July and closed a $2.5 billion divestiture in March, an insider file consisting of one small sale and six administrative entries is genuinely uninformative, and we record it as such rather than reading a signal into it. For contrast, KKR in this same batch shows six open-market purchases by five people including both co-chief executives — that is what a signal looks like, and this is not one.

9. Verdict, kill-criteria and flip conditions

Hold.

The case for owning it. Duke Energy is a regulated electric monopoly with $201.1 billion of segment assets, a freshly settled North Carolina rate case at a 9.8% allowed return on equity and a 53% equity component on approximately $25.7 billion of North Carolina retail rate base, a beta of 0.371, a maximum twelve-month drawdown of 6.9%, and a 3.43% dividend. It has beaten consensus in five consecutive quarters, most recently this morning by 10.0%. Consensus expects 7.0% earnings growth in each of the next three years with a 1.4% dispersion across fourteen analysts. It is a good asset and it does what it says.

The case against buying it here, which is the operative one. Our base fair value of $129 is 3.8% above spot and asymmetry is 1.37:1. The street's $136.89 sits in a $134–$140 band and 19 of 32 analysts are at hold. At 17.3x FY2027 consensus the stock is squarely mid-range for a regulated utility, and there is no mechanism by which it becomes cheap: fourteen analysts agree on the earnings within 1.4%, the allowed return is set by a commission, and a 10% earnings beat this morning moved the shares two cents. Meanwhile the company has generated NEGATIVE free cash flow in three of the last four fiscal years, spends roughly $16 billion a year against $12 billion of operating cash flow, pays out 63.9% of earnings in dividends, and funds the gap with debt and with a $6 billion at-the-market equity programme that priced 4,690,908 shares in the first half of 2026 alone. Net shareholder yield — dividend less dilution — is roughly 2.2%, not 3.43%.

We are not going to manufacture a Buy out of a 3.8% base case on a 1.37:1 payoff. Nor is there any case for Avoid: this is a low-beta regulated monopoly with a settled rate case and a covered dividend, and the bear case requires regulatory or financing failure rather than mere disappointment. Hold is the honest tier, and $107 is the price at which it stops being one.

Pre-registered KILL criteria — what would take this to Avoid:

• The North Carolina Utilities Commission rejecting or materially conditioning the Stipulations, or Year 1 rates slipping materially beyond 2027-01-01.
• An ATM equity tranche priced below $110, which would signal financing stress and dilute the per-share growth harder than modelled.
• The dividend payout ratio exceeding 75% of adjusted earnings, or any indication the dividend is being funded by the ATM rather than by earnings.
• Net debt to EBITDA above 6.5x, or a credit-rating downgrade, either of which raises the cost of the capital plan that IS the growth.
• Storm costs beyond the just-settled Hurricane Helene and Winter Storm Fern treatment requiring a new deferral or securitisation request.
• A large-load tariff resolved on terms that deter data-centre load, or explicit guidance that data-centre load growth is coming in below projection — the company's own risk factor names this.
• The Duke Energy Progress / Duke Energy Carolinas combination failing to complete by 2027-01-01, or being approved with conditions that consume the claimed cost savings.

Pre-registered UPGRADE conditions — what would take this to Buy — Tactical:

• A price below $107, which is 15.0x FY2027 consensus and roughly 1.55x derived common book. At that level the same forecast produces a 20% base-case return and the verdict changes on arithmetic alone.
• A large-load tariff concluded on terms that visibly accelerate rate-base growth, together with guidance lifting the earnings-growth trajectory above 7%. This is the single most plausible route from Hold to Buy and the proceeding is due within months.
• The ATM programme being materially displaced by asset sales on the Piedmont Tennessee model, which would remove the dilution deduction from the return bridge.
• NCUC approval of the Stipulations as filed, plus a second jurisdiction settling on comparable terms.
• Any knowledge-base coverage at all. At present this name has one claim, it is an allocation principle, and Duke fails its own 60% payout screen.

Where DUK fits in the Synthos Framework Portfolio. The utilities/income sleeve, held at existing weight if already owned, no new capital today. Sizing note: the correct response to a fairly-valued low-beta income asset is to have a price at which you would buy it and to wait for it. Ours is $107 — which is below the 52-week low, and that is the honest implication of a 17.3x multiple on a 7% grower. Logged as a tracked Synthos call (Hold) as of 2026-08-04 at $124.30, with the fair-value anchors, kill criteria and the $107 upgrade trigger all gradeable.

Single biggest risk: permanent negative free cash flow financed with new shares. Duke Energy spent $14,024 million on capital in fiscal 2025 against $12,352 million of operating cash flow, and $8,240 million in the first half of 2026 alone. That gap is the growth — every approved dollar earns 9.8% — and it is funded by borrowing and by issuing stock. Total debt is $90,869 million, roughly 5.6x trailing EBITDA. A $6 billion at-the-market programme runs to September 2028 and priced 4,690,908 shares in six months, one tranche at exactly today's price. The dividend of $4.26 is 63.9% of adjusted earnings and is paid out of a business that does not generate free cash. None of this is unusual for a regulated utility and none of it is a solvency concern; it is the reason the return is 6-7% rather than 10%, and it is the reason the vendor's 14.31% free-cash-flow yield — which is a sign error on an 84% understatement — would mislead anyone who used it. The kill criteria above are set on financing terms and regulatory outcomes because those, not operations, are what would break this.

Provenance & disclosures

• Traceability: 1 knowledge-base claim names Duke Energy out of 51,928 distilled claims (raw hits 1, entity matches 1, used 1, discarded 0; breadth 1, net conviction negligible-positive). The claim: ray_dalio, 2026-01-28, bullish, conviction 70, skill 0.7 — the lowest weight band in the store, horizon principle, entities PG/JNJ/KO/CL/NEE/DUK — "Allocate 30-35% to businesses with pricing power that raise prices faster than inflation — dividend aristocrats in staples (PG, KO, CL), utilities (NEE, DUK) and healthcare (JNJ), payout below 60%." It is an asset-allocation principle naming Duke as one of six examples across three sectors, NOT a view on this security, and it is not treated as name-level conviction. DUKE FAILS THE CLAIM'S OWN SCREEN: the rule specifies a payout below 60% and Duke Energy's $4.26 dividend against $6.67 of trailing adjusted earnings is 63.9% — reported rather than quietly counted as supportive. The claim carries speaker: uncertain (neither a named speaker nor null) with speaker_role: independent; under the standing finding that speaker attribution is unreliable, the channel slug is not treated as an established attribution of this statement. Homograph check on a three-letter ticker whose long form is also a university and an aristocratic title: the case-sensitive sweep ran "Duke Energy" and word-bounded "DUK" only, produced one hit and no false positives, and nothing was discarded; a looser sweep on "Duke" alone was NOT run because it would have been dominated by noise. The quote is verbatim from the stored claim text.
• Data as-of: fundamentals — segment revenue and income, capital expenditure, interest expense, the Piedmont Tennessee disposition, the ATM equity programme and the utility-combination status through 2026-06-30, from the 10-Q filed 2026-08-04, the same day this dive is struck; the rate-case settlement terms from the 8-Ks filed 2026-07-06 and 2026-07-17; second-quarter results from the 8-K filed 2026-08-04 · estimates 2026-08-04 · prices 2026-08-04, quote timestamp 1785873599 = 2026-08-04T19:59:59Z ($124.30, +0.02%; 50-DMA $125.56; 200-DMA $124.64; RSI 49.87; MACD −0.012) · knowledge-base claims 2026-08-04. Duke Energy's fiscal year is the calendar year. All figures come from the Synthos vendor data file for DUK or from the SEC filings in the DUK archive; no figure comes from memory, recall or external retrieval.
• Filing archive contents — the best in this batch. 10-K filed 2026-02-26 (fiscal 2025, 561 preserved [TABLE] blocks); 10-Q filed 2026-05-05 (March 2026 quarter, 266 tables); 10-Q filed 2026-08-04 — TODAY — covering the June 2026 quarter, with 287 preserved tables, the source of the segment reconciliation, the $8,240M half-year capital expenditure, the $201,091M of segment assets, the Piedmont Tennessee sale terms, the ATM forward tranches and the 779,702,193 share count; 8-K filed 2026-07-06 (Partial Stipulation and Storm Cost Stipulation with the NCUC, 21 tables); 8-K filed 2026-07-17 (Comprehensive Revenue Requirement Settlement — 9.8% ROE, 53% equity, ~$25.7B NC retail rate base, $496M over two years, large-load tariff proceeding, 27 tables); 8-K filed 2026-08-04 (second-quarter results, Item 2.02; the news release itself is Exhibit 99.1 and is furnished rather than filed, and is not in the extracted text). Unlike four of the twelve names in this batch, statement tables ARE preserved here and were used directly.
• Where the filings contradicted or corrected the vendor: free cash flow — the vendor's freeCashFlowPerShareTTM of $17.804 equals operatingCashFlowPerShareTTM ($14.870) PLUS capexPerShareTTM ($2.933), an addition where a subtraction belongs, on a capex figure 84% below the $14,024M in the vendor's own cf_a and the $8,240M half-year figure in today's 10-Q; the corrected TTM free cash flow per share is approximately MINUS $3.13 and the freeCashFlowYieldTTM of 14.31% should be negative; debt composition — bal_a files $80,108M of long-term debt under capitalLeaseObligations while reporting longTermDebt of $1,033M, against $957M and $76,340M a year earlier (the total of $90,869M is unaffected and is used); the segment structure — seg_prod's fiscal-2025 entry contains a single "Other Revenues" line of $1,651M, 5.1% of the $32,237M reported, against today's 10-Q segment table which reconciles to $7,592M exactly for the June quarter; the dividend payout ratio — the vendor's 1.56% against an actual 63.9%, a factor of 41; and the entire corporate-action set — the 2026-07-17 rate-case settlement, the 2026-03-31 $2.5 billion Piedmont Tennessee sale to Spire, the $6 billion March 2026 ATM programme with four forward tranches priced in H1 2026, and the pending Duke Energy Progress into Duke Energy Carolinas combination targeted for 2027-01-01, none of which appears in any vendor field. Where vendor and filing AGREED — recorded: the share count is exact (10-Q 779,702,193 at 2026-07-31 against 779,596,217 implied by market capitalisation ÷ price, 0.014% apart); inc_q June-quarter revenue of $7,592M matches the 10-Q segment table to the dollar; inc_q interest expense of $957M matches the 10-Q exactly; earn_cal actuals are on a single adjusted-EPS basis and the trailing sum of $6.67 reconciles to priceToEarningsRatioTTM's implied $6.660 within 0.2%; and seg_geo's FY2023 entry of $29,060M of United States revenue reconciles exactly to inc_a for the same year.
• Definitional note, not an error: inc_q reports Q2 2026 net income of $1,092M; today's 10-Q shows $1,145M of net income, $1,092M attributable to Duke Energy Corporation after $53M of noncontrolling interests, and $1,077M of segment income available to common after $15M of preferred dividends. All three are correct at different levels; the vendor uses the middle one, and this dive uses the filing's $1,077M wherever a per-common-share figure is implied.
• Rejected as a class — the cash-flow cascade from finding 1: freeCashFlowYieldTTM (14.31%), priceToFreeCashFlowRatioTTM (6.99x), evToFreeCashFlowTTM (13.52x), freeCashFlowOperatingCashFlowRatioTTM (1.197 — arithmetically impossible with positive capex), capexToDepreciationTTM (−9.067 — arithmetically impossible), capexToOperatingCashFlowTTM (0.197 against an actual 1.135), dividendPaidAndCapexCoverageRatioTTM (4.894), capitalExpenditureCoverageRatioTTM (5.070), freeCashFlowToEquityTTM ($8,435M), freeCashFlowToFirmTTM and incomeQualityTTM (1.784). The vendor composite rating's discounted-cash-flow sub-score of 4 out of 5 is built on the same figure and carries no weight. Separately rejected: est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg for the fixed-ratio signature (exactly 52.001% and 35.101% of revenueAvg in five consecutive forward years); seg_prod for fiscal 2025; longTermDebtToCapitalRatioTTM and debtToCapitalRatioTTM for the composition error in finding 2; and dividendPayoutRatioTTM.
• enterpriseValueTTM correction: the vendor's $187,469M omits $1,177M of noncontrolling interests and $973M of preferred stock; corrected enterprise value is approximately $189,619M, a 1.1% increase, and EV/EBITDA becomes approximately 11.7x. The mildest instance of the SPGI NCI-omission class in this batch. No lease double-count of the T or TJX class was found — total debt reconciles exactly to its three components in both fiscal years.
• returnOnEquityTTM — source stated: present in km_ttm at 9.88% and absent from ratios_ttm. We use km_ttm's figure and note it is struck on total equity including $973M of preferred and $1,177M of noncontrolling interests, so return on common equity is modestly higher. Note that a regulated utility's realised return on equity should sit near its allowed return, and 9.88% against the newly-settled 9.8% North Carolina allowance is exactly what a well-run utility looks like.
• Estimate coverage: 14 analysts on both FY2026 and FY2027 adjusted EPS — the anchor for all three fair values, with an FY2027 range of $7.119 to $7.219, a 1.4% spread that is the tightest in this batch; 9 on FY2028; 3 each on FY2029 and FY2030, both excluded from every conclusion. Revenue coverage is 13-15 analysts and is used only for context.
• Peer note: the vendor peer set — AEP, Dominion, DTE, Entergy, Exelon, National Grid, PSEG, Southern, WEC and Xcel — is ten out of ten genuine regulated-utility comparables, the cleanest peer block in this batch, with Southern Company ($107.3B) the closest by size. No cross-multiple is drawn, because this file contains no equivalent forward-EPS data for the peers.
• Fair-value caveat: the $107 / $129 / $148 anchors are multiples of the FY2027 consensus adjusted EPS distribution — 15.0x the low of $7.119, 18.0x the mean of $7.169, and 20.5x the high of $7.219 — cross-checked against FY2026 and FY2028 and against derived common book value of approximately $69.03 per share. Stated arithmetic, not a discounted cash flow. No cash-flow-based cross-check is applied anywhere, because the company's free cash flow is negative and the vendor's figure for it is wrong in both sign and magnitude. The base is sensitivity-disclosed: 17.3x — the current multiple held flat — gives $124, which is spot; 19x gives $136, which is the street. The base assumes NO multiple expansion, and there is no case for assuming one on an asset whose return on equity is set by a commission at 9.8%.
• Timing: second-quarter 2026 results were released 2026-08-04 — THE DAY THIS DIVE IS STRUCK — and beat consensus adjusted EPS by 10.0% ($1.43 against $1.30) on revenue of $7,592M against $7,659M estimated, a 0.9% shortfall. The stock closed up two cents. The 10-Q and the results 8-K were both filed the same day and are the primary sources for this dive. The next print is 2026-11-05, 93 days away (consensus $1.93, revenue $8,983M). The most recent insider filing is dated 2026-07-06 and is a director restricted-stock-unit deferral.
• Accessibility note: no information in this dive is conveyed by colour. All emphasis is carried by bold text, table structure and explicit labelling.
• Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalised. No recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security is made to any person.
• Version: 2026-08-04-full.