Eversource sees 4.35% gain in earnings

Eversource Energy saw its earnings increase by 4.35 percent last year, despite a decline in electric distribution and generation earnings, company officials said Wednesday.

The Hartford-based company made $1.033 billion, or $3.25 cents per share, last year, compared to $988 million, or $3.11 cents per share, the previous year. Last year’s results for Eversource included a charge of $26 million, or 8 cents per share, associated with the company’s investment in an natural gas pipeline project and nonrecurring tax benefits of $18 million, or 6 cents per share.

The company made 2.56 percent less in the final three months of last year than it did in the fourth quarter of 2017. Eversource earned $231.3 million, or 73 cents per share, during the fourth quarter last year, compared to $237.4 million, or 75 cents per share, during the same period in 2017.

Jim Judge, Eversource’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said the company provided “top-tier levels of safe and reliable electric, natural gas and water service ... despite some significant challenges that Mother Nature threw our way.”

“We also continued to provide our shareholders with an attractive and growing dividend and strong share price performance,” Judge said in a statement.

Eversource Energy’s electric distribution division earned $455.4 million in 2018, compared with $497.4 million during all of the previous year. Fourth-quarter earnings for the business unit were $76.2 million last year, compared with $104 million during the same period in 2017.

Company officials said the decrease in earnings for the business unit were due primarily to the divestiture of Eversource’s New Hampshire fossil and hydro plants in 2018, and higher depreciation, interest and property tax expense, primarily in Connecticut.

The company’s earnings announcement came after the close of U.S. financial markets on Wednesday. Eversource’s shares trade under the symbol ES on the New York Stock Exchange.

The stock closed at $70.27 Wednesday, down 13 cents from the previous day’s trading.

Eversource serves nearly 4 million electric, natural gas and water customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.