FirstEnergy

Sure.

Well, uh, uh, just by way of background for any listeners who, who are not fa- uh, familiar with it, uh, seven years ago, by its own admission, FirstEnergy, which is the, uh, uh, electric utility that services northeastern Ohio, by its own admission, it paid $61 million in bribe money to get the general assembly to pass a b- a bailout bill of failed nuclear plants and coal, uh, coal-fired plants, um, for which we, uh, are still paying the $1.3 billion price.

Um, people have gone to prison because of that, people have taken their lives because of that, and people are still awaiting trial because of that.

Uh, they include, uh, the two top executives at FirstEnergy.

Uh, they, they, they went to trial f- first last spring in, uh, in Akron.

Uh, the jury deliberated long and hard, but it, it ended up in what's called a hung jury.

And, and this is a prosecution, by the way, that unlike, unlike mo- almost every prosecution in the state of Ohio, it's handled by our county prosecuting attorneys and by our, by our city attorneys or city law directors.

Th-that's what we elect them to do.

... obviously, uh, have them beating, uh, who, who they playing week four? Uh-

The Browns at First Energy.

Yeah.

I have them beating the Browns.

What's his

problem? Something about he took money from First Energy or something like that.

But, you

know,

Let's audit all the fucking businesses here.

Let's start with Clinton Management Energy Services, First Energy, the Islamic Brotherhood, Lutheran Social Services, the Ukrainian banks, these NGOs.

None of these motherfuckers have ever been audited by the Secretary of State.

But I did.

They produced a report on net zero 2050.

And the way I learned about this is not because there was any media coverage on it, not even because EPRI did a press release, okay? I had filed a shareholder proposal with a Midwest utility called FirstEnergy , and my shareholder proposal basically asked for them to explain to shareholders, uh, how they are going to reach net zero and to report on the progress every year.

Okay, it's 'cause, 'cause First Energy is saying that they're gonna be net zero by 2050.

And so I had a con… [clears throat] Of course, they're trying to talk me off the ledge and, um, we had a phone call and, um, so they said, "Well, haven't you seen the EPRI report?"The EPRI report says that net zero is possible.

You're seeing electricity prices go up.

That coupled with John Husted, um, being the golden boy for FirstEnergy, uh, has, uh-- we're in a, in a huge scan- huge, um, energy scandal, bribery scandal.

Um, you've seen prices go up even more as a result.

So, um, and that, that just means, as you know, Aaron, it means hundreds of millions of dollars in this state coming from outside interest.

I am an energy addict with over 22 years of utility experience.

I've worked for Pepco, First Energy, PSEG, and Con Ed.

And honestly, I'm a lot of work in asset management, utility of the future.

And I personally believe it's the best time to be in the utility business to address all those challenges.

W- our view on the data center side is, is let's just keep it simple.

We wanna buy the OG utilities because at the end of the day, you still need power, right? So that's why we like NextEra and FirstEnergy and Southern Corp because I think in the meantime, those are gonna be names that I think are gonna be much more consistent.

I, I, I get that, but, but that's a great example that you use, utilities.

I don't know what utilities historically trade at from a, a multiple standpoint, but I can probably bet you that a, a lot of these are trading ahead of whatever their historical averages are because there's so much excitement about the build-out of data centers and what you're talking about and the, the, the need for power and what have you.

So in general, we think a lot of this political rhetoric will ultimately blow over and the companies will be able to navigate it.

Our preferred names are some of the names like FirstEnergy, Exelon, that are in more out of favor states that I think in the long run will be well positioned.

And then other states that are, other companies like a NextEra that's well positioned on these islanded solutions and data center campuses that are less dependent on local politics to provide long-term solutions for the data centers and ultimately drive longer term earnings growth for the companies.

And then in terms of, um, the sensitivity to what's going on in the bond market or what the Fed does, I mean, I guess that's just always the background noise for this group, but how do they, how do you expect they'll trade in relation to all that?