Dive Brief:

• Southern Co. yesterday reported second quarter earnings of $629 million, or 69 cents per share, up from $611 million in the same period last year.
• The company got a boost from retail revenue effects at regulated utilities, warmer weather and stronger than expected performance of its Southern Power subsidiary. 
• Maintenance expenses and non-fuel operations held the company's earnings back, however; results for the first half also included millions of dollars in increased expenses at the company's Kemper County integrated gasification combined cycle project.

Dive Insight:

Southern Co.'s retail KWh sales rose about 2.2% in the second quarter, but overall sales so far this year are still lagging last year's numbers slightly.

Southern reported total wholesale sales of 7,806 million KWh in the second quarter, a small 1.3% bump over the same quarter a year ago. But comparing the first half of 2015 to last year tells a different story — wholesale sales are down around 6%, thus far totaling less than 15,000 million KWh.

Southern's total sales this year are about 0.6% lower than the first half of 2014.

"We are encouraged by positive customer growth during the second quarter of 2015, particularly in the residential sector," Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas Fanning said in a statement. "Also, for the first time since 2004, we have experienced two consecutive quarters of weather-normalized growth in all three customer classes – residential, commercial and industrial – as our region continues to grow faster than the U.S. as a whole."

Second-quarter 2015 operating revenues were $4.34 billion, compared with $4.47 billion, or about a 2.9% decline from last year. For the six months ended June 30, operating revenues were $8.52 billion, a decrease of 6.5%.