Dominion Energy said on Monday it expects annual earnings to fall short of Wall Street forecasts, even as the utility significantly boosted its long-term capital spending plan to keep pace with rapidly rising electricity demand.
U.S. power utilities have been committing billions of dollars in additional investment as they respond to increasingly extreme weather events and a surge in demand from energy-intensive data centres supporting artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency operations.
The Richmond, Virginia-based company said it had secured contracts for nearly 48.5 gigawatts of data centre capacity as of December, an increase of 1.4 gigawatts compared with September.
Dominion’s customer base includes major technology companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Equinix, alongside privately held firms including CoreWeave and CyrusOne.
The company’s Virginia utility serves what Dominion describes as the world’s largest data centre market, with total capacity exceeding that of the next five largest U.S. data centre markets combined.
Dominion now plans to invest $64.7 billion in capital expenditures between 2026 and 2030, representing a nearly 30% increase from its previous five-year spending plan of $50.1 billion, which covered the period through 2029.
Despite the expanded investment outlook, the company’s shares slipped 1.4% in premarket trading after it forecast fiscal 2026 operating earnings in the range of $3.45 to $3.69 per share. The midpoint of that range came in below analysts’ average estimate of $3.60, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Dominion’s fourth-quarter operating expenses rose nearly 11% year-on-year to $3.33 billion, offsetting what the company otherwise described as a solid quarter.
Adjusted earnings for the quarter ended December 31 stood at 68 cents per share, narrowly exceeding analysts’ expectations of 67 cents.
