AES to Be Taken Private in $33 Billion Deal. Why It’s the S&P 500’s Worst Stock Today.
By Nate Wolf
Updated March 02, 2026, 4:30 pm EST / Original March 02, 2026, 7:17 am EST
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AES shareholders will receive $15 a share in the take-private deal. (AFP via Getty Images)
Key Points
About This Summary
- AES, a clean energy supplier, is being taken private by a consortium for $15 a share, an all-cash deal with an enterprise value of $33.4 billion.
- The investor consortium includes EQT Group, BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, Qatar Investment Authority, and CalPERS.
- .AES stock falls as $15-a-share offer disappoints shareholders.
AES-17.77%, the utilities and clean energy company, is being taken private by an investor consortium that includes an EQT Group infrastructure fund and BlackRockBLK+0.48%-owned Global Infrastructure Partners.
The consortium, which also includes the Qatar Investment Authority and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, will pay $15 a share for the world’s largest supplier of clean energy to corporations. The all-cash deal has an enterprise value of $33.4 billion.
AES stock fell 17.8% to $14.21 on Monday. It was the worst performer in the S&P 500 and its largest single-day percentage decline since March 18, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Shareholders were likely disappointed by the price. AES shares surged in October after a report said Global Infrastructure Partners was nearing a potential $38 billion buyout. The $15-per-share price is a 40% premium to AES’ share price last July, when reports of a potential sale first came out, but a discount to the stock’s $17.28 price as of the close of trading Friday.
Investors may have been too optimistic about the takeout price because the situation never evolved into a bidding war with multiple potential buyers, Evercore ISI pointed out in a research note Monday.
AES was looking for ways to support growth after multiple years of declining revenue and ballooning long-term debt. Absent a deal, management may have needed to reduce or eliminate its dividend or issue new equity, the company said.
“AES has a significant need for capital to support growth beyond 2027, particularly given the significant new investments in both US generation and utilities businesses,” Chairman Jay Morse said in a statement.
The transaction is expected to close in late 2026 or early 2027.
Growing demand for energy, driven in large part by data centers and the artificial-intelligence boom, made AES an attractive target for private investors. In recent years, the company won contracts to provide renewable energy to companies such as Microsoft
MSFT+1.48% and Meta PlatformsMETA+0.83%.
“The transaction underscores growing infrastructure fund interest in real assets, particularly power and utility platforms, amid rising electricity demand and the need for grid expansion and generation buildout,” said Tim Winter, portfolio manager of the Gabelli Utilities Fund at Gabelli Funds.
Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com
These Stocks Are Today’s Movers: AES, Norwegian, Elevance, Palantir, Lockheed, Strategy, Berkshire Hathaway, and More
and George Glover
Updated March 02, 2026, 5:05 pm EST / Original March 02, 2026, 5:22 am EST
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Traders working at the New York Stock Exchange. (Courtesy NYSE)
Key Points
About This Summary
- Defense contractors rally after the U.S. and Israel jointly strike Iran.
- Coherent and Lumentum stocks advance after Nvidia pledges to invest $2 billion in each of the companies.
- Elevance Health falls after the insurer says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services planned to impose sanctions on its operations.
Stocks eked out small gains on Monday after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran over the weekend, jolting global markets.
These stocks were making moves:
Chevron rose 1% and Exxon Mobil gained 1.5% and 1.1%, respectively, after the fighting broke out. West Texas Intermediate futures rose 6.4%.
Other oil stocks were climbing. ConocoPhillips rose 4.2% and APA advanced 4.4%. Coterra Energy and Devon Energy gained 3% and 3.3%, respectively. EOG Resources rose 3.7% and Occidental Petroleum ticked up 2.1%.
Venture Global, a major producer of liquefied natural gas, posted better-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter, though 2026 guidance missed analysts’ forecasts. The stock surged 17% as LNG prices rose.
Shares in cruise-line operators tumbled as investors worried surge in oil prices would drive up fuel costs. Carnival and Royal Caribbean Group fell 7.6% and 3.3%, respectively. Norwegian Cruise Line
NCLH-10.53% slumped 11% following its fourth-quarter adjusted earnings, which topped consensus views but were overshadowed by the fighting.
Airline stocks slumped on widespread travel chaos. American Airlines and Delta Air Lines were down 4.2% and 2.2%, respectively. United Airlines was 2.9% lower.
Defense contractors rallied. L3Harris Technologies added 3.8%, Lockheed Martin
LMT+3.37% advanced 3.4%, Northrop Grumman gained 6%, and RTX rose 4.7%.
AES-17.77% sank 18% to $14.21. The clean-energy company has agreed to be taken private by an investor consortium that includes BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners for $15 a share. The deal has an enterprise value of $33.4 billion.
Elevance Health tumbled 8.1%. The insurer said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services planned to impose sanctions on its operations because of “alleged noncompliance” with certain risk adjustment data submission requirements.
Coherent surged 15%. Nvidia pledged to invest $2 billion each in Coherent and laser maker Lumentum as well as committed to multibillion-dollar purchase agreements with the companies. Lumentum was up 12%.
PLTR+5.82% advanced 5.8%. The data-analytics giant counts the U.S. government among its biggest customers and maintains a relationship with Israeli security agencies.
Strategy climbed 6.3%. The world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin snapped up 3,015 tokens last week for a total $204.1 million, a securities filing showed. The price of Bitcoin has rise 5.9% over the past 24 hours to $68,966, according to CoinDesk data.
Gene therapy maker uniQure sank 33%. The Food and Drug Administration said Phase 1 and Phase 2 test data are insufficient to prove the effectiveness of AMT-130, uniQure’s therapy for Huntington’s disease.
BRK.B-4.91% slid 4.9% after the investing conglomerate reported fourth-quarter earnings on Saturday. Berkshire’s operating profit after taxes fell 30% from a year ago and the company bought back none of its own stock in the period. The results covered Warren Buffett’s final three months as the company’s CEO.
Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com and George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.comShow Conversation (3)
Review & Preview: Stocks Are Flat as the World Shakes
By Teresa Rivas
March 02, 2026, 8:04 pm EST
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Unfazed. Stocks were little changed on Monday despite the geopolitical earthquakes over the weekend, including the death of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after strikes from the U.S. and Israel. President Donald Trump said Monday that more Americans would likely die in the conflict after the first six fatalities. Still, markets were little fazed.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged down 0.2% on Monday, while the S&P 500 inched 0.04% higher and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.4%.
“The U.S. equity selloff…reversed in short order, which makes sense,” said Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy at Global X. “Geopolitical events generally lead to brief periods of heightened volatility, but markets are usually quick to recover losses and tend to move higher in the subsequent weeks. The military operation does not really change the economic backdrop for U.S. companies.”
Stocks may not have had a big move, but precious metals soared, with gold reaching $5,300. Oil surged as well on concerns about supply shortages. Brent crude saw the biggest move, spiking 13% at one point.
“There are two main reasons for the spike in energy prices,” explains Dominic Pappalardo, chief multi-asset strategist at Morningstar Wealth. “First, production capabilities in the impacted countries may either be damaged through military strikes or shut down by choice and secondly, the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz causes significant disruption to energy exports out of the middle east as roughly 20% of the world’s oil consumption passes through. In addition to the over 20 million barrels of oil that pass through daily, approximately 20% of global liquified natural gas also pass through the passage which unfortunately has few alternative routes.”
Elsewhere, the rotation away from tech and other sectors seen as vulnerable to an artificial intelligence takeover was muted. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector exchange-traded fund continued to see some relief, as did the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF. Both are down around 7% in the past month.
“Relative macroeconomic resilience, exemplified by strong ‘economic surprise’ readings, has cushioned the impact of tech sector anxiety, limiting a potential full-blown correction to a violent sector rotation,” notes Lisa Shalett, CIO of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
Company
Last
Chg
Chg%
Dow Jones Industrial Average
48,904.78
-73.14
-0.15%
S&P 500 Index
6,881.62
2.74
0.04%
NASDAQ Composite Index
22,748.86
80.65
0.36%
Market Data as of
3/2/2026, 5:15:59 PM
The Hot Stock: Northrop Grumman +6%
The Biggest Loser: AES Corporation -17.8%
Best Sector: Energy +2%
Worst Sector: Consumer Staples -1.4%March 2-1.25-1.00-0.75-0.50-0.2500.250.500.75%Nasdaq CompositeS&P 500Dow industrials
The Post-Buffett Era Begins
BRK.B-4.91% Chief Executive Greg Abel has big shoes to fill after Warren Buffett gave up the corner office to become chairman of his firm. He seems to have gotten off on the wrong foot with investors.
Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway lost 5% on Monday after the firm’s fourth-quarter operating profit fell 30%. The report included Abel’s inaugural shareholder letter, which drew praise from longtime Berkshire supporters, as my colleague Andrew Bary reported. Still, there hasn’t been much overall movement, as “the company indicated no change in capital allocation. It didn’t buy any stock in the fourth quarter or January 2026, continuing a trend that began in May 2024, and Abel signaled that no dividend is imminent.”
Several analysts were unimpressed with the results, released on Saturday, Andrew notes. Somewhat confusingly Berkshire didn’t call out the $1.6 billion goodwill write-down related to certain units in its earnings release Saturday. Overall, it seems understandable why the Street was looking for more, especially from a man who’s signaled he hopes to have decades at Berkshire’s helm:
Some investors thought that Abel might signal a greater willingness to return cash to investors, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. One idea would have been a tender offer for, say, $50 billion of Berkshire stock.
No company is sitting on anything close to Berkshire’s level of cash and the company has about $127 billion of it now at the parent company, where it can be more easily paid out to shareholders…
Abel issued no commentary on the report and didn’t hold a conference call. That seems like a mistake given the complexity of the Berkshire results. Berkshire also didn’t break down the fourth-quarter results for many units in keeping with a longstanding policy.
Abel plans to continue Buffett’s policy of no quarterly earnings calls, writing they are inconsistent with a “long-term horizon.”
Read the rest of Andrew’s story here.
The Calendar
AeroVironment, AutoZone, Best Buy, CrowdStrike Holdings, On Holding, Ross Stores, Target, and Viking Holdings report earnings tomorrow.
What We’re Reading Today
- PMI Rises in February, Marking Second Month of U.S. Manufacturing Growth
- Brazil, Mexico Provide Safe Haven Amid Middle East Tumult: Charts
- LNG is Soaring Even More Than Oil. Watch These Stocks.
- Everything To Know About The F-15 Jet Shot Down By Kuwait
- Bank, Brokerage Stocks Recover Lost Ground After Last Week’s Selloff—Despite Iran Conflict
- Worried About Citrini’s Report? Just Watch Star Trek.
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