CFOs speak out: Growth Strategy for the 21st Century

For The 21st Century

Interviews by

So it begins again. After several financially tumultuous years, executives at many of the nation's top utilities can once again look to the horizon and ask the growth question worthy of a Caesar: "What worlds to conquer?"

Utility executives are emboldened by bulging free cash flows, improved credit quality, lower operations and maintenance costs, favorable regulatory treatment, growing service territories, and increasing demand for power.

But even as confidence is returning to the industry, today's utility executives say they will not venture far from their core business. Never again will they put their companies at risk or be driven by pie-in-the-sky growth fantasies that are too good to be true. Back-to-basics is where the industry has come, and back-to-basics is where it will stay, the defenders of the new orthodoxy say.

Yet, as with any orthodoxy, there are limitations. The back-to-basics mantra harks back to an earlier time in the utility industry's history, when all utilities were viewed as a low-growth, low-risk, high-yielding investment.