The second quarter was another stellar period for publicly traded Texas utilities, even if strong earnings growth was eclipsed by political backlash and rising interest rates, hurting stock prices.
The latest reports and executive commentary suggest that large-load demand growth in Texas is continuing at a breakneck pace. All major Texas utilities or merchant power companies at the very least reiterated rosy earnings outlooks despite the sound and fury coming from Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas state house and countless local politicians. Even as Texas legislators tap the brakes, Texas is still likely to surpass Virginia as the global leader in data-center power markets by 2030.
“In terms of robustness of the large-load backlogs [executives expressed] confidence in their ability to execute on those backlogs,” said Alex Kania, a longtime utilities analyst at brokerage U.S. Bancorp/BTIG. “There was a uniform sense that they felt OK about the political environment.”
The kind of double-digit percentage growth in revenue that was once unheard of for the steady utility business is now the norm, thanks to the artificial-intelligence boom.
Houston utility CenterPoint’s revenue rose 11% to $2.15 billion in the second quarter.
