CenterPoint Energy (NYSE: CNP) beat the Street in Q3 on a very simple story: Houston’s industrial appetite for electrons is exploding, and regulators are letting the utility recoup what it spends to keep up. Adjusted EPS landed at $0.50 (vs. $0.44 est.), up more than 60% y/y on a non-GAAP basis. The drivers were textbook utility levers—about $0.07/share from growth and regulatory recovery and $0.12/share from leaner O&M—partly shaved by $0.04/share in higher interest expense. GAAP EPS was $0.45 on net income of $293 million.
Under the hood, the Houston Electric business keeps doing the heavy lifting. Overall throughput in Houston is up 9% YTD; industrial throughput is up 11% YTD and 17% quarter-over-quarter. CenterPoint says it has already connected 500 MW of data centers this year, and it’s not pretending demand will cool: the company forecasts a 10 GW jump in Houston peak load by 2031—nearly a 50% surge in six years—as AI data centers, refiners, and port-driven exports pile on.
That demand case underwrites a record $65 billion 10-year capital plan (with line-of-sight to another ~$10 billion in optionality), aimed at grid resilience, reliability, and growth across its multi-state footprint serving 7+ million electric and gas customers. Management reiterated 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance of $1.75–$1.77 (midpoint implies ~9% growth vs. 2024) and said 2026 should land at least at the midpoint of $1.89–$1.91 (about 8% growth vs. 2025 midpoint).
This is the first clean utility up-cycle of the AI era playing out in real time. CenterPoint’s bet is that Houston becomes the canonical case study for industrial electrification and datacenter load, and that regulators will keep the cost-recovery gears meshing while the company hardens a coastal grid against ugly weather. If those two conditions hold, double-digit rate-base growth through decade-end is not a stretch.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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