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essential facilities, amounting to $487 million in 1975. Most of this money must be financed externally through the sale of securities. At the present time interest on mortgage bonds is around 11 per cent compared to about 6 per cent in the late sixties. You can seethe impact when you consider this raises the amount of interest paid on a $100 million issue by some $5 million annually. Last year, alone, we had to issue $175 million of mortgage bonds in addition to other securities to finance our 1974 construction program.
The financial problems have been compounded further by the sharp drop this year in the market price of Vepco common stock which is now selling at about $12, or 66 per cent of its book value. In view of this, investors have little incentive to buy stock when they see what is happening to existing stockholders.
Finally, we are extremely concerned over the difficulties that electric rate increases create for consumers and regret that the action of inflation and other forces outside our control make them
IN MEMORIAM
96.8%