Dominion Energy's Stock Rally: What's Behind the Surge and Why I'm Not Buying It

So Dominion Energy just threw itself a little party.

They gathered some suits out at the Lake Murray dam in South Carolina, unveiled a shiny new plaque, and patted themselves on the back for a 100-year-old pile of dirt and concrete. It’s now a "National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark." That’s nice. I’m sure the dam is very proud.

You have to admire the sheer, unadulterated PR genius of it. While you’re looking at the sepia-toned photos of a bygone era, Dominion is busy playing a high-stakes poker game with billions of your dollars, betting the entire farm on a future that’s anything but certain. This whole ceremony feels less like a celebration and more like a magic trick—a classic misdirection. "Look at this sturdy, reliable old thing we built!" they say, hoping you won't look at the teetering Jenga tower of debt and ambition they're building just offshore.

The Wall Street Shell Game

Let’s be real. Nobody on Wall Street cares about a historic dam. They care about the stock ticker (NYSE: D), and right now, that ticker is telling a very confusing story. The stock is up, analysts are tripping over themselves to raise their price targets to $63, $66, even $67, and the narrative they’re selling is pure, uncut hopium.

They whisper sweet nothings about "robust demand growth" from data centers that are sucking up electricity like black holes. They point to a massive $50 billion capital spending plan through 2029 as proof of a bold, green future. The consensus is that the stock is just a little bit undervalued, a bargain waiting to be snatched up.

It’s a great story. A real page-turner. The problem is, it might be fiction. Dig a little deeper, and you find other models—the boring ones that use discounted cash flow instead of pixie dust—that suggest the stock is wildly overvalued, with a fair price closer to $37 than $62. That’s not a rounding error; that’s a chasm. So which is it? Is Dominion a steady utility with a bright future, or is it a pig with lipstick, puffed up by market hype?

This is the part of the movie where the seasoned detective squints and says, "Something ain't right here." The company is talking about 5–7% annual EPS growth, numbers that sound more like a tech startup than a regulated utility. That kind of growth doesn’t just happen. It has to be manufactured, forced, and paid for with mountains of capital. Which brings us to their biggest, riskiest bet of all.

A $50 Billion Bet on the Ocean Breeze

Dominion is essentially trying to transform itself from a lumbering, predictable beast into a nimble green-tech unicorn. The centerpiece of this transformation is the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project—a 2.6-gigawatt behemoth that’s supposed to power 660,000 homes. To get it done, they’ve built a special vessel, the Charybdis, and are dumping tens of billions into the Atlantic.

This isn’t just an upgrade; it’s a complete corporate reinvention. It’s like watching your grandpa sell his Buick, buy a neon-green Lamborghini, and announce he’s becoming a professional street racer. It’s a bold move. No, 'bold' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm, bet-the-company gamble.

And they’re doing it while facing what the reports politely call "political headwinds." We all know what that means. The political winds can change direction with every election cycle, turning a brilliant green investment into a stranded, rusting asset overnight. What happens if the subsidies dry up? What happens if construction costs—which always, always balloon on projects this size—get out of control?

Dominion’s executives stand up there and promise "first power in Q1 2026" with the confidence of a man reading yesterday’s weather report. I’ve seen this movie before. Big infrastructure, big promises, and offcourse, big delays. They’re asking investors to believe they can pull off one of the largest clean-energy projects in the nation on time and on budget, despite a world of evidence to the contrary. And honestly...

Then again, maybe I’m the crazy one. Maybe this time it’s different. Maybe a century-old power company really can pivot on a dime and become the vanguard of a renewable energy revolution without a single catastrophic misstep.

Yeah, and maybe I’ll win the lottery tomorrow.

So, What's the Real Story?

Here’s my take. Dominion is doing what it has to do. The world is changing, and clinging to the old ways is a death sentence. But don’t mistake necessity for genius. They are strapping themselves to a rocket fueled by cheap debt, Wall Street hype, and the insatiable energy demands of the tech industry. It might reach orbit. Or, it might blow up on the launchpad. The plaque on the old dam is a reminder of a time when things were built to last, a time of certainty. This new Dominion? It's a roll of the dice, and we’re all just waiting to see how they land.