Dive Brief:
- PPL Corp. hit the high end of its expected range, announcing 2014 earnings of $1.74 billion, or $2.61/share, compared with $1.13 billion in 2013.
- The company said it had strong results from its regulated utility and competitive supply segments, and has made "significant progress" in the spinning off its supply business.
- The Morning Call reports that PPL Chairman and CEO William Spence said the company will file for a rate increase as well, but no details were provided.
Dive Insight:
PPL's spinoff of its energy supply business is moving forward and will eventually be combined with Riverstone's competitive generation business to form a new publicly traded company called Talen Energy.
"Our supply business performance was very strong in a turbulent market in 2014, providing further evidence that Talen Energy will be an important, resilient player in the U.S. merchant power sector," said William Spence, PPL's chairman, president and CEO. "Our internal transition work also is on schedule, including the identification of $75 million of targeted annual ongoing corporate support cost savings, and we expect to close this transaction in the second quarter of 2015."
The company reported earnings from ongoing operations, which exclude special items, of $1.63 billion, or $2.45/share, hitting the top end of the 2014 forecast range. Earnings from ongoing operations in 2013 were $1.59 billion, or $2.45/share.
Spence said solid performance from the company's utility operations, infrastructure investments and the spinoff progress "gives us confidence in PPL's ability to achieve compound annual earnings growth of 4 to 6 percent through at least 2017, following the spinoff of our supply business."