April 23 (Reuters) - NextEra Energy beat Wall Street estimates for first-quarter adjusted profit on Thursday, driven by strong electricity demand and growth in its renewables and storage business.
Shares of the company rose 1.4% in premarket trading.
Rising U.S. electricity demand, fueled by population growth, electrification trends and increasing power needs from data centers and industrial users, is benefiting utilities with large generation and development pipelines. The S&P 500 utilities index
has risen 7.5% in the quarter ended March 31.
NextEra's regulated utility, Florida Power & Light (FPL), posted a net income of $1.46 billion during the quarter, up 11.1% from a year earlier, lifted by an increase in customers and continued capital investments.
FPL added nearly 100,000 customers during the quarter and expanded its total owned and operated solar capacity to more than 8.5 gigawatts (GW).
NextEra Energy Resources (NER), the company's renewables and storage unit, added 4 GW of new renewable and storage projects to its backlog, including 1.3 GW of battery storage. Its total backlog now stands at about 33 GW.
NER is also advancing its data center strategy, with plans to develop 9.5 GW of new gas-fired generation in Texas and Pennsylvania to support large-scale power demand.
NextEra earned $1.09 per share on an adjusted basis for the quarter, compared with analysts' average estimate of 96 cents per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.
The company maintained its full-year adjusted earnings per share forecast at $3.92 to $4.02 and reiterated its guidance of more than 8% annual earnings growth through 2032.
(Reporting by Katha Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)
