Pepco Holdings, Inc. is a
holding companyA holding company is a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock. It usually refers to a company which does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow...
incorporated in February of 2001 for the purpose of effecting the acquisition of
Conectiv Power Delivery by
Potomac Electric Power CompanyThe Potomac Electric Power Company, known as Pepco, is a public utility supplying electric power to the city of Washington, D.C., and to surrounding communities in Maryland...
(better known as "Pepco"). The acquisition was completed on August 1, 2002 at which time Pepco and Conectiv became wholly owned subsidiaries of PHI. Conectiv itself had been formed in 1998 to be the holding company of
Delmarva Power & Light Company (DPL, better known as "Delmarva Power") and
Atlantic City Electric Company (ACE) in connection with the combination of DPL and ACE. In 2005, PHI resumed the use of the Delmarva Power and ACE brands for purposes of operations, with the result that
Conectiv Energy was the only remaining Conectiv brand and was restricted for PHI's energy production facilities.
Operations of the various companies controlled by Pepco Holdings take place in the
Mid-Atlantic statesThe Mid-Atlantic states, also called middle Atlantic states or simply the mid Atlantic, form a region of the United States generally located between New England and the South...
of the United States. Delmarva Power specifically serves the
Delmarva PeninsulaThe Delmarva Peninsula is a large peninsula on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia...
.
Pepco Holdings was placed at 283rd on the 2006
Fortune 500The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...
, a list of American companies ranked by gross revenue. In 2010, the company paid only 10% of the taxes it had paid in the previous year, dropping from US$104 million to US$11 million. The company experienced a doubling of operating profit in 2011, in part due to approved utility rate increases in the states of Delaware, Washington, Maryland and New Jersey.