Edison International

CEOs only, those at the top of their game and at the top of their companies, and looking at this sector at a really, really important time, a time when we are growing again, a time when we have all kinds of needs to accommodate, be they policy-driven, technology-driven, capital-driven, or driven, as ever, by growth and the need to build for a growing economy.

I'm delighted to have as my first guest Pedro Pizarro, the CEO of Edison International.

I can't think of anybody better to begin with.

I'm hoping that we have a very wide-ranging but also pretty tight conversation, where we're going to be looking at the things that make California, and southern California in particular, a bit of a postcard from the future.

Looking specifically at some of those risks that right now are existential for California, let's say wildfires, that might be propagating around the rest of the country.

We'll be talking, I hope, about how this particular area, this particular part of the country, this particular state, and this particular utility give us some indications from what the rest of the world can learn and what the rest of the world can anticipate and hopefully take away.

My guest today is Pedro Pizarro of Edison International, and we're gonna jump right into it, and I'm gonna ask Pedro to give us the expansive version of the story of Edison International and all the companies therein.

Pedro, over to you.

And also looking not just at where the executives themselves sit today, but how they got there and how they see the future.

We're gonna hear from the likes of people like Southern California Edison and Edison International or ComEd in the Chicago area.

And you're gonna find out about the kind of backgrounds of people that run these companies.

And let's be clear, they're actually not obvious at all.

The only reason people are not currently rebuilding, myself included, is because we are still 20 months in fighting to get the money out of our insurance policies and our claims.

And we're still going back and forth with, you know, SCE and Edison International and who continue to try and create every delay possible to settle these cases.

We were talking a bit about that in our previous segments, Sean, and I'm curious as someone going through this yourself, how long can you wait? This feels like a siege where the, the army's outside kind of wait what's going on inside the fort and how, how many provisions do they have? How long do you

have? You know, I mean, it depends, you know, for a lot of people, I think that the three year mark and obviously the powers that be the Goliath, you know, the many Goliath that we are David battling, um, knows this.

You're talking about the Xcel Energies of the world.

Edison International, those actually caught very strong bids after being sold out very aggressively.

So defensive stocks in some areas of the market yesterday actually caught a little bit of a bid, and I'm looking for a full-on rotation and getting maybe not out of the mega cap names, but once again, putting dollars to work for other areas of the market that have been aggressively oversold and probably undervalued right now.

Okay, let's talk a little bit more about yields, KG.

The stock's down 5% for the year, and that 7.1% dividend yield, cold comfort.

How about no comfort? The fourth-highest yield in the S&P, brutal Edison International, the California-based electric utility, 6.8% yield.

This one's down 26% over the last month, although nearly all of that's from what happened with the California legislature, which killed a plan to partially protect utilities from wildfire liability.

That's not E- Edison International's fault, but I think you'd have to be crazy to bet on a California utility no matter how big the dividend yield might be.

You can't trust that legislature in California to do the reasonable thing for everybody.

Finally, the fifth-highest yielder in the S&P 500 is intriguing to me.

So why take risks in dividend-paying stocks if you can buy bonds with less risk? We use the CNBC Stock Screener, available where else? On CNBC.com to check the biggest dividend payers in the S&P 500.

Avicii Properties, UPS, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Edison International.

Those are all down big recently, as you can see right there on the screen.

And speaking of dividends, T-Mobile boosting its dividend by 15 percent after the bell last night.

After the break, we'll take you live to Texas and check in with our Phil LeBeau, who's in the middle of a ride on an autonomous trucking trip from Houston to Palmer.

Dan, the CEO of Edison International is with us, one of the largest utilities in the United States.

How the AI build-out is impacting energy prices, plus how they're thinking about growing climate risks to the grid.

Stay with us.

Diesel prices at the pump.

At all-time highs, the CEO of Schneider joins us to discuss how those costs are hitting the economy and the consumer.

And then after the break, the CEO of Edison International, one of the largest utilities in the country, on AI power demand and some of the most prominent risks facing the grid.

Don't go away.