Dominion Power 2008 Annual Report Download - page 18

16 Dominion 2008
Free Cash Flow Covers Operations, Maintenance—and Dividend.
Revenue generated by our businesses gives us the cash needed to cover
the costs of operating and maintaining them efficiently and safely. And it
covers your dividend payments, as well as some of our spending for growth—
an estimated $2.4 billion in 2009 and $2.0 billion in 2010, of which about
90 percent is planned for our regulated entities.
Like many businesses expanding for the long term, we plan to raise the
balance of needed growth capital by accessing the debt and equity markets.
In all instances, we will access the markets in a manner that we believe will
maintain our credit profile and strong liquidity position. Fortunately, our
financial strength and reputation give us continued access to capital markets
and help ensure that we maintain adequate liquidity.
Accessing Debt Markets, Maintaining Credit Ratings. Our access
to traditional funding sources was beginning to function more normally by
late 2008 and early 2009. In late 2008, for example, in two separate offer-
ings we issued $1.3 billion of new long-term debt through our electric utility
subsidiary and holding company. More than 120 institutional investors
participated in each offering. While the interest rates on this debt are higher
than they have been in recent years, we were pleased to demonstrate our
access to markets that were largely closed to many companies. In addition,
short-term markets for our commercial paper program began to act more
rationally by year-end, although rates were higher than in the recent past. At
no point did we ever lose access to the commercial paper markets.
Because of our continued ability to access the long-term capital markets,
we ended 2008 with $2.9 billion in readily available liquidity, excluding com-
mitments by Lehman Brothers.
Fortunately, our financial strength and
reputation give us continued
access to capital markets and help ensure
that we maintain adequate liquidity.