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TickerSO
SectorRegulated Electric
Mkt cap$103.5B
EV / EBITDA12.4×
PostureHigh Velocity
Composite78/100
LensBuyer-side
SE-Cluster Research·Issuer Brief·Q2 2026CIK 92122

The Southern Company

SOHIGH VELOCITYDEAL MODE DOMINANT

The Southern Company reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Platform Builder deploying $828M across 4 disclosed transactions, up 218% vs the prior cycle · primary market Energy Infrastructure, ranked #7 on disclosed spend.

Lens

Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)

$828M

+218%

vs $260M in 2020–2022

Disclosed transactions

4

+100%

2/3 active fiscal years in window

Buyer archetype

Platform Builder

Large and recent disclosed spend expands platforms or service-line scale.

Composite score

78

/100

High Velocity dominates · Deal Mode Dominant

Financial snapshot
Revenue$30.2B
EBITDA$14.4B
Enterprise value$178.5B
EV / Revenue5.9×
EV / EBITDA12.4×
P/EN/A
Cash$981M
Total debt$1.7B
as of 2026-05-10
§ I·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Behavioral posture, nine reads.

Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.

Active Acquirer

63/100

Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A

  • $10.7B disclosed buyer spend
  • Filed within 21d

Buyer Cadence

50/100

Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity

  • Filed within 21d
  • 456 8-Ks

Target Probability

8/100

Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings

Spin/Carve

0/100

Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture

Pressure Watch

17/100

Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure

Distress Watch

0/100

Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns

Restatement Risk

0/100

Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings

Capital Velocity

Dominant
78/100

Issuers with the highest filing-activity intensity

  • 456 8-Ks
  • Filed within 21d
  • 4 form types

Quiet Power

57/100

Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence

  • Enterprise value $178.5B
  • 10-Q 26d ago
  • 2 active signals
§ II·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Capital cadence.

Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.

16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $635M · Peak count: 3

FYDisclosed buysDisclosed spendAvg ticketAudited tier
20252$635M$318MN/A
2024N/AN/AN/AN/A
20232$193M$97MN/A
20221$179M$179MN/A
2021N/A$300KN/AN/A
20201$81M$81MN/A
§ III·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Strategy posture.

The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.

Archetype mix

  • Geographic Expansion
    33%
  • Platform
    33%
  • Bolt On
    33%

Strategy keywords

Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.

  • geographic_expansion
  • platform
  • bolt_on
§ IV·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing language.

Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.

A majority of Southern Power's partnerships in renewable facilities allow for the sharing of cash distributions and tax benefits at differing percentages, with Southern Power being the controlling member and thus consolidating the assets and operations of the partnerships.

10-KFY2021

At December 31, 2021, Southern Power had eight tax equity partnership arrangements where the tax equity investors receive substantially all of the tax benefits from the facilities, including ITCs and PTCs.

10-KFY2021

At December 31, 2020, Southern Power had six tax-equity partnership arrangements where the tax-equity investors receive substantially all of the tax benefits from the facilities, including ITCs and PTCs.

10-KFY2020

Southern Power develops, constructs, acquires, owns, and manages power generation assets, including renewable energy projects

10-KFY2018
§ V·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Market context.

Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.

Primary market

Energy Infrastructure

Market spend (2023–2025)
$86.6B
Market spend (2020–2022)
$40.3B
Recent vs prior
+115%
Issuer rank in market
#7 of 129
Share of market capital
3.5%

Valuation positioning

12.4×EV / EBITDA

SO trades at a -0.6-turn discount to the Energy Infrastructure peer median of 12.9×.

EV / Revenue
5.9×
Net debt / EBITDA
0.0×
Peer median EV / EBITDA
12.9×

Trading comparables

FMP market data · 2026-05-10

CompanyEV / EBITDAEV / RevNet debt / EBITDARevenueM&A 2023–2025
19.9×11.8×9.3×$1.5B$1B
13.3×4.8×-0.3×$9.3B$3.7B
12.5×2.5×0.9×$35.9B$5.8B
The Southern CompanySO
12.4×5.9×0.0×$30.2B$828M
7.0×2.7×-0.2×$58.3B$2.7B

Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Energy Infrastructure. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.

§ VI·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Target landscape.

Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.

No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.

Stated target categories

No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.

§ VII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing activity & signal stream.

Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.

Filing cadence

  • 10-K (annual)332026-02-19
  • 10-Q (quarterly)1002026-04-30
  • 8-K (event)4562026-04-30
  • Proxy / DEF 14A752026-05-05
  • Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)0N/A

Signals on file

  • info

    Signal

    Serial acquisition history

  • info

    Signal

    10-K strategy themes

§ VIII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Audited corpus.

No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.

This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.

The Southern Company: Issuer Brief | SE-Cluster