Sempra lifts five-year spending plan, beats quarterly profit estimates
By Pooja Menon
Feb 26 (Reuters) - Energy infrastructure company Sempra SRE.N raised its five-year capital plan by 16% and beat Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter adjusted profit on Thursday, helped by the strong performance of its utility in Texas and its efforts to modernize the electrical grid.
The company's shares rose 2.2% in morning trading.
With tech giants racing to build data centers to support complex artificial intelligence-related tasks, U.S. utilities are stepping up their capital-expenditure budgets to keep pace with the surge in power demand.
Sempra has been simplifying its business model by concentrating investments in its utilities and modernizing the grid to be more capital efficient.
The company projected capital expenditure from 2026 to 2030 at $65 billion, up from the prior plan of $56 billion from 2025 to 2029, to focus on regulated utility investments in Texas and California.
Quarterly results were lifted by strong performance at Sempra Texas, whose utility Oncor continued to expand its electrical grid to meet power demand from industrial customers and data centers.
Sempra also identified an additional $9 billion of potential incremental capital expenditures through 2030 with the majority intended to support Oncor's grid expansion.
The company expects to complete a planned sale of a 45% stake in Sempra Infrastructure Partners to KKR affiliates for $10 billion by the second quarter or third quarter.
"Capital recycling, a clear funding path without common equity issuance under the base plan, and continued dividend growth further support the company’s simplified, utility-centric investment profile," said Nicholas Amicucci, analyst at Evercore ISI.
Earnings at its Sempra Texas utilities segment rose 48.9% to $201 million in the reported quarter.
The San Diego, California-based company posted an adjusted profit of $1.28 per share for the three months ended December 31, compared with analysts' estimates of $1.17 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.
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