NextEra Energy results beat estimates on renewables boom - Reuters
NextEra Energy results beat estimates on renewables boom | Reuters
NextEra Energy results beat estimates on renewables boom
July 25 (Reuters) - NextEra Energy Inc (NEE.N) second-quarter results beat Wall Street estimates on Tuesday as the world's largest wind and solar power firm benefited from strength in its renewable energy unit.
The company has gained from a clean energy investment push that has received strong policy support following the 2022 U.S. Inflation Reduction Act which includes major provisions for cutting carbon emissions.
NextEra has also benefited from volatility in energy prices, with natural gas skyrocketing in 2022 after Russia cut supplies to Europe.
NextEra Energy Partners (NEP.N), a limited-partnership formed by NextEra Energy, said in May it would sell its natural gas pipeline assets to focus solely on renewables and meet real zero carbon emissions target in 2025.
The company's regulated utilities business, Florida Power & Light (FPL), onboarded 66,000 more customers year-on-year, while its clean energy unit, NextEra Energy Resources (NEER), added 1,665 megawatts of new renewables and storage projects in the second quarter.
"Wind resource performed significantly better than our expectations ... potentially highlighting NEER's diverse asset base and/or asset efficiency versus competitors," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Shelby Tucker.
The company's new renewables and storage backlog now stands at nearly 20 gigawatts (GW) after it placed about 1.8 GW of power into service in the reported quarter.
NextEra expects FPL to add nearly 3,100 MW of incremental solar power through 2025, the company said in a call with analysts.
Its quarterly revenue rose nearly 42% to $7.35 billion, beating estimates of $6.23 billion, according to Refinitiv data.
On an adjusted basis, it earned 88 cents per share in the quarter, topping analysts' average estimate of 82 cents.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.