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Southern Company to Seek Toshiba's Help for Georgia Reactors

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Electric utility firm Southern Company (SO - Free Report) is likely to approach Toshiba for help to complete the construction of Georgia nuclear reactors.

The companies are working together for the Vogtle project in Georgia. According to The Wall Street Journal, the project has directly employed 5,000 people and created 30,000 jobs across the supply chain. We note that the project is backed by the U.S. administration. Southern Company expects Toshiba to uphold the financial, operational as well as moral commitments toward the Vogtle reactors.

Toshiba subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric Co., has filed for bankruptcy protection after being hit by losses due to the increase in safety demands by U.S. regulators as well as significantly higher-than-anticipated costs of labor, equipments and other components. Although Toshiba will honor the $5.9 billion in Westinghouse obligations, it intends to exit the nuclear plant constructions in order to limit the amount of losses incurred.

About the Company

Southern Company acquires, develops, builds, owns and operates power production and delivery facilities. It also provides a broad range of energy-related services to utilities and industrial companies in selected countries around the world. Its businesses include independent power projects, integrated utilities, a distribution company, as well as energy trading and marketing businesses outside the Southeastern U.S. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

Price Performance

In the past one month, the company’s share appreciated 1.52%, while the Zacks categorized Utility Electric Power industry witnessed an increase of 6.75%.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

Southern Company carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the same space are CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (CNP - Free Report) , Ameren Corporation (AEE - Free Report) and Entergy Corporation (ETR - Free Report) . All these three companies hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

CenterPoint is expected to witness year-over-year earnings growth of 5.04% in 2017. The company had an average positive earnings surprise of 0.40% in the last four quarters.

Ameren Corporation is expected to see current year sales growth of 6.32% year over year. The company had an average positive earnings surprise of 4.20% in the last four quarters.

Entergy‘s year-over-year sales growth estimate for the current year is 2.68%. The company posted a positive earnings surprise of 181.82% in the last quarter of 2016.

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