CONSOLIDATED EDISON INC (ED): what the price assumes

boothcheck covers CONSOLIDATED EDISON INC (ED) but does not put one priced-in number on it: here the defensible answer is the evidence rather than a point estimate. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

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

Headline

FieldValue
TickerED
CompanyCONSOLIDATED EDISON INC
Sector / IndustryUtilities
Current price$107.49/sh
CompositionCECONY Electric 69% / CECONY Gas 19% / CECONY Steam 4% / O&R Electric 6% / O&R Gas 2% / Con Edison Transmission 0% / Other 0%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

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

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Multiple paid23x operating income

The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.

Solve inputs: computed at a 6.1% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)

ReferenceValue
vs own history-1.26σ
cohort percentile (of 70 peers)67

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
Asset1.78x5expensive
Earnings1.29x4expensive
Relative1.48x2expensive
Growth0.71x5justifies

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

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.5%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=16)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$243.700.44xyesFCF base $4.4B, growth 8% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 9.5%, 6yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$150.900.71xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 5.7x / 7.7x / 9.7x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr
Relative ValuationRelativenoP/E 20x (static sector reference · 2026-04), scenarios: 16.7x / 20.0x / 23.3x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 13x
Simple DDMGrowth$438.380.25xyesDPS $3.34, g=8.4% (sustainable: ROE (TTM) × retention; not the terminal-growth assumption), ke=9.3%
Two-Stage DDMGrowth$74.171.45xyesStage 1: 8% for 5yr, Stage 2: 3.5% perpetual
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$63.251.70xyesBV/sh $69.45, ROE (TTM) 8.4%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$60.341.78xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$90.431.19xyesRev $17.4B, growth 8% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 1.9x / 2.3x / 2.7x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$71.161.51xyesEPS $5.93, growth 8% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=2.19 (Overvalued)
Margin TrajectoryGrowthno
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$59.301.81xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $2.91B × (1−25%) / WACC 9.5% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset$59.871.80xyesBV $69.45 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 8.4% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 5.5%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$96.261.12xyes√(22.5 × EPS $5.93 × BVPS $69.45) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelativenoEBITDA $5.32B × sector EV/EBITDA 13.0x
FCF YieldEarnings$118.030.91xyesFCF $4137.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarningsno
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$125.660.86xyesEPS $5.93 × (8.5 + 2×8.4%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$24.144.45xyesBV $69.45 × (ROIC 3.3% / WACC 9.5%)
P/Sales SectorRelativenoRevenue $17.39B × sector P/S 2.5x
PEG Fair ValueRelative$74.651.44xyesEPS $5.93 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 8.4% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 12.6x
Earnings YieldEarnings$64.111.68xyesEPS $5.93 / 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
CECONY (regulated utility)operatingenterprise$15.7bwithheldunresolved no unit value
O&R (regulated utility)operatingenterprise$1.3bwithheldunresolved no unit value
Con Edison Transmissionoperatingenterprise$4.0mwithheldunresolved 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$27.4b
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)12.18x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)9.17x
Interest coverage2.4x
Share count CAGR (dilution)0.6%
Burning cashno

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

Here is the number that looks wrong until you understand the business. Con Edison converts about 20.1% of revenue into operating profit, and that puts it near the bottom of the large regulated cohort: EIX runs 30.8%, DUK 27.2%, D 26.2%, PEG 25.2%, SO 24.2%. On any ordinary industrial reading that would be a company losing ground. It is nothing of the sort. A regulated utility does not earn a margin on sales; it earns an authorized return on the capital it has invested, and the cost of the electricity and gas it buys flows through the revenue line to customers largely untouched. A higher pass-through means a lower margin and no less profit. The margin is measuring the commodity, not the company.

What actually drives earnings is rate base, and the pipeline of rate base is unusually large. The 10-K states that CECONY projects that $72 billion of capital expenditures will be needed between 2025 and 2034 to implement its strategy, driven by the emissions targets in New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, and it says plainly that implementing the strategy will require capital expenditures above historic norms. For a business whose earnings are a percentage of invested capital, a decade of spending above historic norms is the growth plan. There is no product cycle to guess at and no market share to win.

The mechanics that turn that spending into recovered cash are also more protective than most people assume. The Utilities' New York electric and gas rate plans include revenue decoupling mechanisms, the steam rate plan carries a weather normalization adjustment, and the plans include provisions for recovery of specified costs. Decoupling breaks the link between volumes and revenue, which is why a mild winter is an inconvenience here rather than a profit warning. The rate plans set an authorized return on common equity in the low-to-mid nine percent range, and the filed year-by-year tables show actual returns landing close to those authorizations rather than far below.

Management behaves the way that structure implies. Guidance has been reaffirmed on 28 separate occasions since 2011, raised twice and withdrawn once, which is a record of saying a number and then delivering it rather than of promising and revising. The company describes its own objective as seeking to provide shareholder value through continued dividend growth, supported by earnings growth in regulated utilities and electric transmission projects, and the dividend has been the vehicle, running at $3.38 a share on a trailing basis with a quarterly declaration of 88.75 cents in July 2026.

There is even improvement in the item that worries people most. CECONY's aged customer receivables, the balances outstanding beyond 60 days, came down from $1,652 million at the end of 2024 to $1,427 million a year later. That is the collections problem getting smaller, not larger, in a service territory where affordability is the hardest political variable in the business.

Bear Case

The competitor here is not another utility. It is the alternative to being connected at all, and New York State is actively funding it. The 10-K expects alternatives to gas and steam to increase, and gas and steam usage to decrease, as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act and New York City's Climate Mobilization Act continue to be implemented. Gas is roughly 19% of the revenue mix and steam another 4%, and the cost of the mains, services and steam loops that deliver them does not fall when the volumes do. Every customer who electrifies a building leaves the remaining gas customers to carry the same fixed asset base, which raises their bills, which encourages the next one to leave. That loop runs slowly, but it runs in one direction, and it is written into state law rather than into a competitor's strategy deck.

The affordability arithmetic is where it bites. At the end of 2025 CECONY's customer accounts receivable stood at $2,970 million, of which $1,427 million was outstanding more than 60 days. Compare that with 2020, when the equivalent figures were $1,322 million of receivables including $408 million aged. Customer receivables have more than doubled and the seriously overdue portion has more than tripled. That is a direct measurement of how much bill the service territory can absorb, and it is the same territory that is being asked to fund a spending programme the company itself calls above historic norms. A regulator facing that data is not a regulator likely to be generous on the next rate case.

Meanwhile the returns are already slipping under the cost of the money that funds them. Consolidated return on equity is running around 8.4% on a trailing basis, against rate plans that authorize returns in the low-to-mid nine percent range and a cost of equity around 9.3%. A business earning less on its book than shareholders require from it is, in the arithmetic that matters, destroying a small amount of value on each incremental dollar of capital, and the plan calls for a great many incremental dollars.

Someone has to supply those dollars, and it is partly the existing holders. The share count has been rising about 0.6% a year across the four years to March 2026, and in May 2026 the company announced a $2 billion at-the-market equity offering programme. The 10-K's own earnings walk lists the dilutive effect of issuing common shares as a negative 18 cents per share contribution in the year. Growth that arrives with a matching share issue is growth per share only if the returns on the new capital clear the cost of the new equity, and on the numbers above they currently do not.

The balance sheet leaves little slack for any of this to go wrong. Net debt stands at $27.4 billion, roughly 7.6 times operating profit, and operating income covers the interest bill about 2.9 times over. Against today's price, the book-value-and-returns methods land well under the market, with the price sitting about 1.85 times that family's central estimate, and the static earnings-power methods sit about 1.35 times below it too. Two brokers cut or held Underweight ratings in late July 2026, with targets of $94 at KeyBanc and $105 at Morgan Stanley, both under the current price. The bear case is not that Con Edison stops operating. It is that a capital-intensive business earning below its cost of equity, funded with new shares, in a service territory with a visible affordability ceiling, does not deserve to trade above the value its own book and returns support.

Valuation

The methods split into two camps here, and the split is the most useful thing in the picture. Peer multiples land essentially level with today's $113.00, and the growth-based cash-flow methods land above it. The book-value-and-returns family lands well below, with the price at roughly 1.85 times that family's central estimate, and the static earnings-power methods sit about 1.35 times under the price as well. Read together, that says the market is paying for the forward capital programme and for what comparable utilities fetch, not for the equity currently on the balance sheet or for the profit currently being earned on it.

The reason those two families disagree is visible in one comparison. Book equity is 70.24 dollars a share against a price of $113.00, while the trailing return on that equity is about 8.4%, below the roughly 9.3% cost of equity the models charge. A business earning less than its cost of equity would normally trade below book. This one trades above it, which is the market saying the book is going to get much bigger on returns that the regulator sets rather than the market. The 10-K puts a figure on the growth: CECONY projects that $72 billion of capital expenditures will be needed between 2025 and 2034.

Against the cohort, the profitability picture needs translating rather than comparing. Trailing operating margin near 20.1% sits below EIX at 30.8%, DUK at 27.2% and D at 26.2%, but a large share of a New York utility's revenue is purchased energy passed through to customers, so the margin partly measures commodity prices rather than performance. The comparison that carries weight is the return earned on invested capital against the return the rate plans authorize, and there the company sits close to but slightly under its authorizations.

The balance sheet is the constraint on the whole plan. Net debt of $27.4 billion works out to about 7.6 times operating profit, interest is covered about 2.9 times over, and the share count has been rising roughly 0.6% a year, which is what funding a large construction programme looks like from the shareholder's side. The dividend has been the compensation for that, running at 3.38 dollars a share on a trailing basis. What the price is really underwriting is a decade of regulated construction paid for with a mixture of debt and new shares, in a jurisdiction where the customer's ability to pay is now a measured, published number rather than an assumption.

Catalysts

Second-quarter results are due August 6, 2026, after the first quarter was reported on May 7, 2026. Summer is the quarter that matters most for a New York electric utility, and the company's chief executive said in June 2026 that grid equipment must expand to handle longer heat waves and higher demand, which is a preview of the argument the utility will be making in its next rate filings.

The financing side is already moving. In May 2026 the company announced a $2 billion at-the-market equity offering programme, which is how a construction plan of this size gets funded without pushing leverage further. Watch the pace of issuance under it: an accelerating draw means the capital plan is running ahead of internally generated funds, and every share issued dilutes the earnings the same plan is meant to produce.

The income side has held steady. The board declared a quarterly dividend of 88.75 cents a share in July 2026, payable September 15, 2026. Sell-side opinion, by contrast, has been moving sideways and downward: KeyBanc cut its target to $94 from $97 and Morgan Stanley lifted its to $105 from $102 on the same day in late July 2026, both while maintaining Underweight ratings. Both figures sit under the market price, which lines up with what the book-value and earnings-power methods say rather than with what the forward-growth methods say.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

CECONY (regulated utility) (reported)

O&R (regulated utility) (reported)

Con Edison Transmission (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

company announcement, May 8, 2026 · company announcement, July 16, 2026 · KeyBanc and Morgan Stanley research notes, July 24, 2026 · company earnings calendar, July 2026 · reported remarks, June 23, 2026

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