Financial Strength Continues To Support Sustainable Growth

In 2013, the company achieved adjusted diluted earnings per share of $4.35, which was in the mid-point of the company’s $4.25 to $4.45 earnings guidance to Wall Street.

Those financial results reflect a full year of earnings from Progress Energy resulting from our merger in July 2012, and customer rate increases to recover our investments in cleaner power plants and digital power delivery systems.

Delivering attractive returns for our investors is one of our primary goals as a sustainable company. Toward that aim, we increased our quarterly dividend by about 2 percent in 2013, the 87th consecutive year Duke Energy has paid a quarterly dividend on its common stock.

Our total shareholder return – the change in stock price plus dividends – for 2013 was approximately 13 percent. This outperformed the 11.0 percent return of the Philadelphia Utility Index (20 U.S. utilities) during the same period. The S&P 500’s total shareholder return of 32.4 percent for 2013 was its best year since 1997.

Duke Energy remains well-positioned to achieve long-term average annual growth in adjusted diluted earnings per share of between 4 to 6 percent from a 2013 base (the first full year for the merged company) through 2016.