Dominion Energy forecasts annual profit below estimates, raises spending plan

Feb 23 (Reuters) – Dominion Energy forecast annual profit below Wall Street expectations on Monday, but raised its five-year capital spending plan by nearly 30% as the utility ramps up its efforts to meet soaring electricity demand.

U.S. utilities have been adding billions of dollars to their capital expenditure budgets amid extreme weather conditions and rising requests for new power capacity from data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

Richmond, Virginia-based Dominion Energy said it had contracted nearly 48.5 gigawatts of data center capacity as of December, up 1.4 GW from September.

Its customers include tech companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Equinix, as well as private firms such as CoreWeave and CyrusOne.

Dominion’s Virginia utility services the world’s largest data center market, which surpasses the combined capacity of the next five largest data center markets in the U.S., according to the company.

Dominion expects to spend $64.7 billion from 2026 through 2030 in capital investments, compared with its prior five-year capital budget of $50.1 billion through 2029.

However, its shares fell 1.4% in premarket hours after the company forecast fiscal 2026 operating earnings of $3.45 to $3.69 per share, where the midpoint was below analysts’ average estimate of $3.60, according to data compiled by LSEG.

The company’s fourth-quarter operating expenses were up nearly 11% to $3.33 billion from a year ago, which offset an otherwise positive quarter.

Dominion’s adjusted profit for the quarter ended December 31 came in at 68 cents per share, narrowly beating estimates of 67 cents.

(Reporting by Dharna Bafna in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)