Capex Wrap: Southern Co., Entergy, CenterPoint and TXNM Update Spending Plans
Powered by the data-center boom as well as enduring broader electrification trends, a handful of publicly traded utilities added to their capital spending forecasts last week, joining peers who also are committing billions more than they had previously expected.
Listed here are details from the earnings reports and conference calls of Southern Co., Entergy Corp., CenterPoint Energy Inc. and TXNM Energy Inc., the former PNM Resources Inc. Links to the earnings report of each company—addressed here in an arc from Georgia west to New Mexico—are in their heading.
Southern Company
Chairman, President and CEO Chris Womack and his team issued a 2025-2029 capital spending plan worth a total of $63 billion, of which $50.3 billion is for the company’s electric utilities. That latter figure is a big jump from the $38.7 billion executives had envisioned spending from 2024 through 2028 and transmission work is the biggest factor driving the increase.
Work on transmission projects across Southern’s networks in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi is expected to require $2.6 billion in capital this year and then grow to $3.5 billion in 2027 and $4.1 billion in 2029. In all, the five-year plan envisions $17.2 billion for transmission work, up from $10.1 billion in Southern’s previous five-year plan.
CFO Dan Tucker told analysts the Southern team sees opportunities for the overall capital plan to grow by another $10 billion to $15 billion, with many potential additions expected to become clearer by mid-year. Generation projects account for many of those incremental dollars, he said.
Southern executives are basing their outlook on annual rate base growth of 7% through 2029, which is a point higher than last year’s figure. That growth rate could tick up to 8% if enough of the incremental spending projects become reality, they added.
Entergy
The leaders of Entergy have beefed up the four-year capital spending forecast they issued last November by about $3 billion to $37 billion. But unlike Southern, the New Orleans-based company with operations in four states is directing most of those extra dollars toward renewables and other generation projects. Each category is growing by about $1 billion versus last fall’s outlook, with the company’s Mississippi utility seeing the biggest jump.
CEO Drew Marsh and CFO Kimberly Fontan told analysts last week that they are tweaking their long-term growth outlook to a minimum of 8% from their previous guidance of 8% to 9%. Growth, they said, remains strong and driven in part by data centers: Industrial load growth clocked in at 15% year over year during the fourth quarter.
CenterPoint
The longer-term capital plans at Houston-based CenterPoint are still a little up in the air, CEO Jason Wells told analysts, even as his team has updated its growth forecast for the Houston region to 50% through the end of 2031. The main reason: The Texas Public Utility Commission will this spring decide whether the state will require the 765 kV or 345 kV standard for transmission buildouts.
Wells and his team know a big job awaits them: Detailing Houston’s “immense growth,” Wells said the forecast for peak demand to reach nearly 31 gigawatts in 2031 from today’s 21 gigawatts is based on multifaceted growth that goes beyond the area’s petrochemical infrastructure system to also include the electrification of the Port of Houston and the growth of Texas Medical Center’s complex.
Today, CenterPoint’s investment plans call for about $26.2 billion to be put to work from 2026 through 2030—a figure that includes $500 million added since last summer’s severe storms to address resiliency projects in Houston. Spending this year is forecast to be $4.8 billion, up from $3.8 billion in 2024.
TXNM Energy
Chairman and CEO Pat Vincent-Collawn and her team have supersized their rolling five-year capital spending plan by 26% to $7.8 billion and are now counting on rate base growth of a whopping 12.4% annually through 2029.
The main driver of that eye-watering forecast is the company’s TNMP utility in Texas, which late last year reached a settlement for its first resiliency program as leaders looked to keep up with rapid growth in West Texas as well as near the Gulf and north of Dallas—with peak demand in December topping 2023’s high mark by 18%. Vincent-Collawn and her lieutenants plan to spend $615 million there this year and will grow that figure to more than $1 billion in both 2028 and 2029.
“We have our shades on here in New Mexico,” Vincent-Collawn said on her teams’ Feb. 21 conference call. “In part because it is sunny here today, but most importantly, because 7% to 9% is a pretty significant growth rate, highlighting the high level of growth we are seeing in Texas.”
