Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has a stake in Duke Energy Corp. and is pushing the utility to add directors to its board and possibly take other actions to boost its stock price, according to people familiar with the matter.
Duke has been in discussions with Elliott, the people said. Elliott might also urge Duke to sell some assets or make operational improvements, some of the people said. The size of Elliott’s position couldn’t be learned. Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke, which has a market value of around $79 billion and some $55 billion of long-term debt, provides electricity to nearly eight million customers in six states including the Carolinas, some Midwestern states and Florida. It distributes natural gas to 1.6 million customers in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas.
In recent months, Moody’s Investors Service and others have lowered Duke’s long-term debt rating, partly in response to the recent settlement of litigation concerning the cleanup of ash from the company’s coal-fired plants. Duke in a written statement didn’t comment on Elliott’s stake but cited its “strong progress over the last year that has cleared a path forward for growth, resolved equity needs at a premium valuation, settled rate cases and coal ash litigation, and accelerated our clean energy transformation, all of which has led us to increase our long-term EPS growth rate and outperform the S&P Utility Index.