duPont Report Released on Valuation of JEA

2018-12-04

Jacksonville, FL - Earlier this year, the City Council Special Committee on the Future of JEA collaborated with the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, which offered to underwrite the cost of an independent analysis by the University of Florida Public Utility Research Center (PURC), to assess the value of JEA. The PURC has completed their six-month study and released their report today. 

JEA cooperated fully with the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and PURC and appreciates the thoughtful and thorough work that went into generating this analysis, which will be a useful tool for strategic planning for years to come. As PURC stated in their report, the assessment is not intended to determine whether JEA should be sold. It is an academic report intended to provide an informed, professional, and independent analysis for both citizens and city leadership.

It is important to reiterate the following in relation to any analysis and reporting that has been done to date:  JEA’s board and management are not pursuing or analyzing a sale of JEA. JEA and the City have a contribution agreement in place through 2021 and have taken steps to extend the agreement through 2023. The JEA Board voted in May to cease any discussions around privatization in order to focus the enterprise on developing a 10-year strategic plan. And recently, Duval County residents voted to make their voice heard should the discussions resume in the future.

With this in mind, several positive and meaningful outcomes can be derived from the PURC report that will be helpful in the future:

• The PURC report validates the need for a 10-year strategic plan and the need for innovation. The research report will be one of the many inputs into the strategic planning process;
• PURC’s independent research affirms JEA’s strategic framework and the focus on its areas of value: Customer Value, Financial Value, Community Impact Value and Environmental Value;
• PURC values JEA as an asset worth substantial financial value and also emphasizes JEA is a value to its customers and to the community beyond the dollars.

Read the report from PURC now (Jessie Ball duPont Fund)

"In August 2018, the Board of JEA unanimously approved a strategic framework, which established four fundamental measures of value for JEA: 1) customer value; 2) financial value; 3) environmental value; and, 4) community impact value," said JEA CEO and Managing Director Aaron Zahn. "Interestingly, the duPont Fund and PURC report suggest a similar set of 'value' measures for community-owned assets."

JEA is the eighth-largest community-owned electric utility in the United States and one of the largest water and sewer utilities in the nation providing electric, water and sewer service to residents and businesses in northeast Florida.

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