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ENTERGY ARKANSAS, LLC (EAI) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

Margin of safety$17.50 ComplexityAverage Updated
What this listing is. The security behind the ticker EAI is not a share of stock. It is Entergy Arkansas, LLC's 4.875% first mortgage bond due September 1, 2066: $25 par, $410 million outstanding, paying $1.21875 per year in quarterly installments (March, June, September and December 1). Entergy Arkansas is a wholly owned electric utility subsidiary of Entergy Corporation, so it has no publicly traded shares. Because there are no shares and no earnings per share to project, we value the bond's promised payments instead. All figures below are dollars per $25 bond. The business behind the bond. Entergy Arkansas is a regulated electric utility serving Arkansas. In 2025 it had revenue of $2,784.0 million (2024: $2,460.2 million) and net income of $437.5 million. Retail electricity sales rose 10% to 25,903 GWh, driven by a 19% rise in industrial sales, mainly primary metals and technology customers. Operating cash flow was $1,335.0 million against $213.6 million of cash interest paid, roughly six times. Debt was 53.7% of total capital at year-end 2025. This bond ranks equally with $5,060 million of first mortgage bonds secured by a lien on the utility's property, so it is about 8% of that secured debt. Its own annual interest is about $20.0 million. How the cases are built. Bear, base and bull are all $21.18. The bond's cash flows are fixed by contract, so the cases can differ only if we can name an evidenced event that changes those payments. We could not name one. The value is every remaining quarterly coupon plus $25 at maturity in September 2066 (about 39.9 years), discounted at 6%, less the accrued interest since September 1. Nothing in the 2025 annual report suggests that payments are in doubt, and the company states that it manages its capital structure to remain consistent with investment-grade debt ratings. We did not credit any value above $25: the issuer may redeem the bond at par at any time, and whether it would do so depends on market interest rates rather than on anything the business has done, so it is not counted as an upside case. We also did not build a default case, because the filings show a secured, cash-generating utility with no named path to missed payments. What the business is worth versus what it owes. In every case the utility's operating cash flow comfortably covers this bond's roughly $20 million of yearly interest and its total interest bill of $213.6 million, and the bond is secured ahead of shareholders. The main pressure point is the size of the investment program. Planned construction is $1,970 million in 2026, $2,375 million in 2027, $1,860 million in 2028 and $1,220 million in 2029 (about $7.4 billion in total), against 2025 operating cash flow of $1,335.0 million, which itself included $215.2 million from transferring 2024 tax credits to third parties. Debt will therefore keep rising, and the company's own schedule shows about $900 million of debt payments including interest in 2026. Two regulatory decisions show the cost-recovery risk. In March 2024 the Arkansas commission's adverse ruling led to a $131.8 million write-off, and in January 2026 it found a need for the planned 754 MW Jefferson Power Station (estimated cost $1,602 million) but did not accept that its costs were prudent. Those outcomes fall mainly on shareholders and future customer rates, not on bond payments, but a run of them would weaken the credit and the bond's market price. Accounting notes. Cash interest paid, operating cash flow and capital spending are taken from Entergy Arkansas's own statements in the 2025 annual report. The combined Entergy filing also reports parent-company totals, which are much larger and were not used. Because the bond is valued on its contractual payments, no per-share owner earnings series is used. Sensitivity, not a case. If the bond's yield were 7% the same payments would be worth about $18.34, and at 8% about $16.12. The 6% figure is the fixed rate we apply to every company. What changed since the last analysis. We previously showed $16.73, $19.25 and $23.00, built by discounting the bond at differing market-style yields of about 5% to 7.5% and treating the coupon as annual. We now discount every case at the same 6%, and we counted the quarterly coupon schedule shown in the annual report, which is worth more than annual payments. Our view of the bond's credit quality is unchanged: a stable regulated utility with no going-concern or distress signals. What would make this wrong. A rating downgrade to below investment grade, a sustained refusal by regulators to let Entergy Arkansas recover its power-plant spending, or a change in the company's willingness to fund construction with equity from its parent would make missed or reduced payments a real possibility. The par-call feature also means an early payout of $25 is possible if the issuer refinances, which would end the coupon stream sooner. Margin-of-safety price. The margin-of-safety price is $17.50, about 17% below the $21.18 value and equal to a yield to maturity of about 7.35%. The margin is wider than the payments alone require because the bond has roughly 40 years of interest-rate exposure and its price can fall well below value for long periods. From $17.50, the base case, with the coupons received and a price at our value after one year, implies well above 20% for that year.

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Sales geography
Arkansas (South region of the United States). Electricity is sold to retail customers across Arkansas, with smaller wholesale sales to affiliated Entergy utilities and to other utilities in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) power market.
Historical growth strategy

We don't have historical growth strategy information for this company yet.

Chart analysis
The filings do not disclose a trading range for this listing, so there is no price history here to read and none is asserted. Structurally, a chartist would treat it as a $25-par, fixed-coupon security that trades inversely to long-term interest rates, with a ceiling near $25 because the issuer can redeem it at par at any time. Price would tend to drift with long-bond yields rather than with company news, and a chartist would look for a base of support well below par and a repeated failure to hold above par as evidence that the ceiling is working.
Competitors

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Circle of competence

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