DTE ENERGY CO (DTE): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $135.86, DTE ENERGY CO (DTE) is priced for -4.3% growth. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Exported: 2026-08-31 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/DTE

Headline

FieldValue
TickerDTE
CompanyDTE ENERGY CO
Sector / IndustryUtilities
Current price$135.86/sh
CompositionElectric - Residential 19% / Electric - Commercial 14% / Electric - Industrial 4% / Electric - Other 6% / Gas - Gas sales 9% / Gas - End User Transportation 2% / Gas - Intermediate Transportation 1% / Gas - Other 1% / DTE Vantage 4% / Energy Trading 40%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Implied growth-4.3%
Multiple paid25x operating income

Solve inputs: computed at a 6% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: elevated (limited comparison data)

ReferenceValue
vs own history-0.60σ
cohort percentile (of 70 peers)80

Valuation X-Ray

Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset1.97x5expensive
Earnings2.72x3expensive
Relative0
Growth0.93x3justifies

Families that justify the price: Growth Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 5.3%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=11)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowthno
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$294.820.46xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 18.2x / 20.2x / 22.2x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr
Relative ValuationRelativenoP/E 20x (static sector reference · 2026-04), scenarios: 16.3x / 20.0x / 23.7x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 15.17x
Simple DDMGrowthno
Two-Stage DDMGrowth$34.303.96xyesStage 1: -15% for 5yr, Stage 2: 3.5% perpetual
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$65.692.07xyesBV/sh $59.24, ROE (TTM) 10.3%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$69.061.97xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$145.720.93xyesRev $16.5B, growth 21% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 1.4x / 1.7x / 2.0x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 12x)
Growth-Adjusted P/ERelativeno
Margin TrajectoryGrowthno
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$19.506.97xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $1.99B × (1−21%) / WACC 5.3% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset$69.681.95xyesBV $59.24 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 10.3% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 6.7%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$90.021.51xyes√(22.5 × EPS $6.08 × BVPS $59.24) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelativenoEBITDA $2.65B × sector EV/EBITDA 13.0x
FCF YieldEarnings$49.972.72xyesFCF $3295.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarningsno
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$5.1026.64xyesEPS $6.08 × (8.5 + 2×-5.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) (excluded from median)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$9.6914.02xyesBV $59.24 × (ROIC 0.9% / WACC 5.3%)
P/Sales SectorRelativenoRevenue $16.52B × sector P/S 2.5x
PEG Fair ValueRelativeno
Earnings YieldEarnings$65.732.07xyesEPS $6.08 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelativeno
Clinical Phase NPVGrowthno
MertonAssetno
V5 Mechanicalno

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

One or more material disclosed units has unresolved economics. Unknown/general is not evidence of homogeneity: segment SOTP is primary but incomplete, consolidated cash flow may remain only a secondary cross-check when every unit shares an enterprise basis, and one sector multiple or target margin is withheld.

UnitRoleValuation basisRevenueReported profitValue evidenceStatus
Electricoperatingenterprise$6.9bwithheldunresolved no unit value
Gasoperatingenterprise$2.1bwithheldunresolved no unit value
DTE Vantageoperatingenterprise$696.0mwithheldunresolved no unit value
Energy Tradingoperatingenterprise$6.5bwithheldunresolved no unit value

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

FieldValue
Net debt$25.1b
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)14.69x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)11.60x
Interest coverage2.0x
Share count CAGR (dilution)1.8%
Burning cashno

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

Start with where the money goes, because for a regulated utility the capital budget is the growth plan. Over the 2026 to 2030 window the electric utility intends to invest about 30 billion dollars, which the annual filing splits into $11 billion for distribution infrastructure, $4 billion for base infrastructure, and $15 billion for cleaner generation including renewables. The gas utility adds another 4.5 billion dollars, roughly $2.7 billion of it base infrastructure and $1.8 billion the main and service renewal program. None of that is discretionary spending a shareholder should want minimized. Approved capital enters the rate base, and the rate base earns a return the commission sets. The company puts it flatly: DTE Electric expects that planned significant capital investments will result in earnings growth. Spend more, earn more, provided the regulator agrees the spending was prudent. That last clause is where the whole argument lives.

What has changed lately is who wants the electricity. In October 2025 the electric utility signed a 1.4 gigawatt data center agreement and secured commission approval in the fourth quarter. In March 2026 it filed contracts to serve a planned 1 gigawatt Google campus in Van Buren Township, structured so that Google will pay the full cost of its energy usage, including all expenses related to new generation, storage, transmission, and distribution needed for the data center. Read past the press-release cadence and the mechanic is unusual. A utility's binding constraint is rarely engineering; it is political. Rate increases get hard when household bills climb, and a very large customer paying for its own incremental system spreads the fixed cost of the grid across a wider base. The company puts the benefit to existing customers at nearly $1.7 billion over the life of that contract. Growth that lowers the average bill is the kind regulators approve.

The regulated core has been delivering while this argument was being made. On filed segment results, electric operating income moved from $1,214 million in 2023 to $1,437 million in 2024 to $1,661 million in 2025, and the first quarter of 2026 carried electric net income of $218 million against $123 million a year earlier, with gas roughly flat at $210 million. Measured the way peers are measured, the electric business converted about 24 cents of every revenue dollar into operating profit last year, which sits alongside DUK at 27.2% and AEP at 24.2% rather than below them.

The generation transition is the same mechanic wearing different clothes. Eleven coal-fired units at Trenton Channel, River Rouge and St. Clair are already retired, the remaining five are scheduled to follow, and the four units at Monroe come out in two stages in 2028 and 2032. Trenton Channel is being repurposed into a battery storage system this year and Belle River converted from base load coal into a natural gas peaking resource. Every retired megawatt has to be replaced by something, and the something is new plant the utility builds, the commission approves, and shareholders earn a return on for decades. A coal fleet running out its useful life is an unusual asset: its retirement creates the reinvestment opportunity.

The obvious objection is the trading desk, which lost money in the first quarter and can do so again. Keep it in proportion. Energy marketing and trading produced $206 million of operating income in 2025 against $2,158 million from the two utilities combined, and management left the full-year outlook unchanged when it published the weak quarter. The bull case does not require the trading arm to perform. It requires Michigan regulators to keep saying yes.

Bear Case

Roughly a third of the revenue line belongs to businesses with no monopoly, no service territory, and no commission setting their return. Energy marketing and trading competes for the same physical and financial gas and power flows as much larger platforms: CEG turned over $29.87 billion of revenue at a 16.6% operating margin last year, NEE $27.87 billion at 29.5%, and D $17.52 billion at 26.2%. The entire DTE enterprise, utilities included, ran $15.81 billion. Scale is not a vanity metric in commodity marketing. The edge per unit is thin, and the fixed cost of risk systems, credit lines and posted collateral does not shrink with the book.

The first quarter of 2026 showed what that exposure looks like from outside. Energy Trading went from $67 million of net income to a $78 million loss and DTE Vantage from $39 million to a $59 million loss, together turning a $445 million quarter into a $247 million one. Trading operating income moved $189 million the wrong way, with unrealized marks swinging from a $112 million gain to a $162 million loss. The quarterly filing explains the mechanic without flinching: These gas structured transactions can result in significant earnings volatility as the derivative components are marked-to-market without revaluing the related non-derivative contracts. The annual filing is blunter about what sits inside the segment: DTE Energy's trading business routinely has speculative trading positions in the market, within strict policy guidelines DTE Energy sets, resulting from the management of DTE Energy's business portfolio.

Now the price. The market values the whole enterprise at roughly 27 times trailing operating profit, which is beyond the upper quartile of its utility peer group. Some of that is denominator rather than enthusiasm, since the trailing year absorbs the first quarter's trading loss. Even allowing for that, the valuation approaches split hard on what the price defends. Only the growth-based cash-flow methods reach it. The price sits about 35% above where the peer-multiple methods land, more than twice the asset-value methods, and near three times the earnings-power methods. That is the shape of the bet: if the durable-compounding assumption softens, the next method that supports anything is a long way beneath today's quote.

And the compounding assumption here is a regulatory one, not a market share one. The company says so in its own risk disclosure: The Registrants cannot predict what rates the MPSC will authorize in future rate cases, and unfavorable rate relief could impact our plans for significant capital investment. The electric rate case filed in April 2025 asked for $574 million and an authorized return on equity of 10.75% against 9.9%. Regulators rarely hand over the whole ask, and every dollar trimmed lands directly on the earnings the capital plan is supposed to produce. Michigan also keeps a competitive wedge in the system, having placed a 10% cap on the total potential retail access migration, and the same filing warns that distributed generation, storage and efficiency technologies could make parts of the delivery system obsolete prior to the end of their useful lives. A utility earning a return on assets that outlive their usefulness is a slow problem, not a sudden one, but it is still a problem.

Then there is how the plan gets paid for. Management expects roughly 3.9 billion dollars of operating cash flow in 2026 against about 6.8 billion dollars of capital investment. The difference comes from capital markets. Net debt already runs near 12 times operating profit, and last year's filed figures show $2,374 million of operating income covering $1,056 million of interest expense, a little over two times. Share count has drifted up rather than down, from 205.6 million at the end of 2022 to 207.7 million at the end of 2025, while dividends declared climbed from $3.88 to $4.44 per share. So the holder funds a rising dividend and a rising asset base with a slowly growing claim count and a growing interest bill. That arrangement works while costs are recovered in rates. It has very little slack if they are not.

Valuation

Four families of valuation method look at this company and reach four different answers, and the shape of the disagreement carries more information than any single result. The asset-value methods, which start from book equity and the return earned on it, reach well under half of what the shares fetch today. The earnings-power methods, which capitalize what the business earns now with no growth credited at all, reach lower still. Peer multiples do better and still leave the price about 35% above where they settle. Only the forward cash-flow methods reach today's quote, and their arithmetic leans on a terminal multiple held flat at today's level six years out. Change that one input and the answer moves further than any operating assumption in the model does.

A utility's share price is mostly a statement about the regulator's future generosity, so it is worth asking what this one embeds. Run the price backwards and the demand it places on the business is modest: company-wide operating income growing about -0.5% a year for five years, which is to say roughly flat, is enough at a cost of capital near 6% and a long-run growth rate of 4%. Those two inputs do most of the work, which is why the result deserves a wide band around it rather than a decimal point. Push the cost of capital up by a single percentage point and the growth the price requires moves by roughly ten. Treat it as direction, not measurement.

Against its own cohort the multiple is the more solid observation. Roughly 27 times trailing operating profit places the enterprise beyond the upper quartile of the utility peer set, and the trailing year is flattered by nothing: it includes a quarter in which two non-utility segments lost money, which shrinks the profit the multiple divides into.

The consolidated margin, meanwhile, understates the business rather than the reverse. Reported operating income of $2,374 million on $15,814 million of revenue in 2025 works out near 15%, under every regulated name in the cohort. The gap is structural. Energy marketing and trading books $6,477 million of gross revenue and converted $206 million of it into operating income, so nearly 40% of the revenue line arrives at close to zero margin and leaves the blended figure looking thin. Strip that pass-through out and the electric utility alone ran about 24% on filed segment results, next to DUK at 27.2% and SO at 24.2%. A reader comparing the headline margin to a utility peer table would draw exactly the wrong conclusion.

The balance sheet is the constraint that ties the pieces together. Net debt runs near 12 times operating profit and interest was covered a little over two times last year, which for a rate-regulated utility is ordinary rather than fragile, because the commission funds the interest through customer rates. It stops being ordinary the moment the commission declines to. The 2026 plan calls for about 6.8 billion dollars of investment against roughly 3.9 billion dollars of expected operating cash flow, per the first-quarter filing, and the remainder arrives from lenders and, at the margin, from new shares. Share count has risen in each of the last three years while the declared dividend went from $3.88 to $4.44. Those are both decisions about who funds the build and in what order they get paid.

Catalysts

The most recent print landed on April 30, 2026 and looked poor at the headline. Reported earnings were $247 million, or $1.19 per diluted share, against $445 million and $2.14 a year earlier. Almost all of the shortfall sat outside the regulated businesses: trading and DTE Vantage both swung to losses while electric net income rose to $218 million from $123 million. Management left its full-year outlook unchanged alongside the release and pointed to more than $1.2 billion invested in the utilities during the quarter, including $400 million in electric distribution.

The development with the longest tail is load. In March 2026 the company filed contracts with the Michigan Public Service Commission to serve Google's planned 1 gigawatt data center in Van Buren Township, with the customer paying the incremental system cost and the company estimating nearly $1.7 billion of affordability benefit to existing customers over the contract's life. That follows the 1.4 gigawatt data center agreement signed in October 2025, which secured commission approval in the fourth quarter. Both sit inside the five-year capital plan rather than on top of it, so the effect shows up as confidence in the existing spending forecast rather than as an increase to it.

The regulatory calendar is what to diary from here. The gas utility filed a rate case on November 13, 2025 seeking a net base rate increase of $163 million and an authorized return on equity of 10.25% against 9.8% today, with a commission order expected in September 2026. A separate depreciation case filed in December 2025 asks for $147 million of higher depreciation rates, which if granted lifts recoverable cost and cash flow ahead of earnings. The second-quarter report is scheduled for July 28, 2026.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Electric (reported)

Gas (reported)

DTE Vantage (reported)

Energy Trading (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

DTE Energy first quarter 2026 earnings release, April 30, 2026 · FY2025 Form 10-K, filed February 17, 2026 · company earnings calendar, July 2026

View the full interactive DTE report on boothcheck