Munger Mode rating: 2 out of 5 — Sell. Our own rating from the research report below, on business quality first: moat durability and management, with price separating the top three.
We have spent sixty years looking for businesses that gush cash, and Xcel Energy is the opposite animal: a business that swallows it. This is a competently run, honestly managed, four-state regulated electric and gas utility with a genuine legal monopoly in its service territories — and it is precisely the kind of business we have learned to admire operationally and decline financially. It has not generated a dollar of free cash flow in over a decade, it must issue both debt and equity every single year to fund growth whose returns a state commission caps at roughly 9.6%, it carries $39.5 billion of debt against $24 billion of equity, and it operates in two of the most dangerous wildfire-liability jurisdictions in America without a statutory liability cap.
Recent filings analysed: 8-K (2026-07-30), 10-Q (2026-07-30), 8-K (2026-07-29), 8-K (2026-07-14).
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