Duke Energy Corporation (NYSE:DUK) has completed a strategic review of its commercial renewables business and hired an investment bank and legal advisers to help negotiate its sale, which is likely to exceed $5 billion. "We're encouraged by the market response to our commercial renewables business and will proceed with a sale targeting a second-quarter 2023 closing," Duke Chief Executive Officer Lynn Good said in a prepared statement. Chief Financial Officer Brian Savoy said Duke completed the review in late April.

He said that the company has not received any formal bids yet, as the decision to sell has just been made. "In the last few weeks, we wrapped up the market evaluation of the business (and) got the right indications to give us confidence that we could move forward with the sales process," he said. Savoy would not discuss what Duke thinks the market value is of the roughly 3.5 gigawatts of wind and solar it owns in its commercial renewables portfolio.

He noted that the book value of the assets is $4 billion, which includes $1 billion worth of tax assets that Duke will retain. That pegs the book value of the assets for sale at $3 billion. The sale price of such corporate assets is traditionally much higher than the book value.

In 2019, Duke sold a minority stake of less than a third of that portfolio to a subsidiary of John Hancock Insurance Co. for $1.25 billion. Based just on that sale and the growth in the portfolio since, the sale of Duke's current share could be worth about $5 billion.

Savoy confirmed that Duke has retained investment bankers and legal counsel to advise on the sale, but he declined to identify them. In late September, M&A tracking outlet Infralogic reported that Duke had retained the investment banks of Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) to advise on the deal. When the sale is complete, Savoy said that Duke will be a company focused solely on regulated utilities.

It will have divested all of its commercial operations.