Dive Brief:
- DTE Energy reported Friday $156 million in third quarter earnings, a drop from the $198 million reported for the same time period last year.
- DTE's numbers represent $0.88 of revenue per share, which was under Wall St. expectations. The Associated Press reports that analysts had anticipated earnings of $1.11 per share, on average.
- DTE officials say a cool summer and severe third quarter weather contributed to the lower earnings, but the company remains on firm financial standing.
Dive Insight:
The severe flooding that put much of Southeastern Michigan under water in August also appears to have taken a chunk out of third quarter revenues for Detroit-based DTE Energy. The company missed Wall St. expectations with its earnings report Friday morning, which showed a 21 percent decrease in revenue compared to the third quarter of 2013.
"In our electric business, for the third year in a row, we experienced double the normal number of days with wind speeds above 40 m.p.h.," said Gerard M. Anerson, DTE chair and CEO, according to a press release. "This resulted in significant stress on our system—including the fourth largest storm outage event in our company's history. We intend to invest significantly to strengthen, harden and automate our system to address these trends and speed the restoration process for our customers."
Despite the earnings hiccup, Anderson and his colleagues say DTE is on track to meet its 2014 financial goals.
"We are on solid financial footing after nine months of the year, despite third quarter weather that included cool temperatures and a challenging number of severe storms," said Peter Oleksiak, DTE Energy senior vice president and chief financial officer.
