Eversource earnings increase

Growth reported despite decline in natural gas profits

HARTFORD — Eversource Energy saw growth in its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings in 2017, despite a 3.9 percent decrease in natural gas distribution profts last year.

Earnings for all of 2017 increased by 4.8 percent to $988 million, or $3.11 per share. That’s compared with profits of $942.3 million, or $2.96 per share, in 2016.

Fourth-quarter earnings for the utility company rose by 3.5 percent to $237.4 million, or 75 cents per share. Eversource had earnings of $229.2 million, or 72 cents per share, during the same period during the final three months of 2016.

Jim Judge, Eversource Energy’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said the company’s investors “experienced very solid increases in dividends and earnings.”

The company’s business units saw earnings growth except for the natural gas distribution division.

Full-year earnings for the natural gas distribution division fell 3.9 percent, or $3.1 million, to $74.6 million. Eversource made $77.7 million on natural gas distribution in 2016.

Jeff Kotkin, a company spokesman, said the earnings decrease in natural gas distribution last year was the result of higher depreciation as well as increases in operation, maintenance and property tax expenses.

The earnings decrease would have been even more steep, Kotkin said, if not for colder weather during the final three months of last year. Fourth-quarter earnings for natural gas distribution essentially were flat: Eversource made $25.5 million during the fourth quarter last year compared to $25.8 million during the final three months of 2016, Kotkin said.

Eversource officials projected the company’s 2018 earnings will be between $3.20 per share and $3.30 per share.

The company’s stock price has lost more than $7 per share in the past month, which Kotkin attributed to higher interest rates making the returns on Eversource shares look less attractive by comparison.

“It’s a problem all utility companies are experiencing,” he said.

Eversource Energy serves nearly 4 million electric, natural gas and water customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The company’s shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ES.

The company’s earnings report was released after the close of trading on U.S. financial markets Thursday. Eversource stock closed at $57.48 on Thursday, up 12 cents from the previous day’s closing.