Power company Entergy on Tuesday reported higher earnings on both an as-reported and operational basis for the third quarter of the year.
After-tax as-reported earnings rose from $388.2 million ($2.16 per share) in third-quarter 2016 to $398.2 million ($2.21 per share) in the latest earnings period. Operational earnings, on a non-generally accepted accounting principles basis, increased from $415.6 million ($2.31 per share) to $423.7 million ($2.35 per share).
Entergy Wholesale Commodities, which operates the company’s three remaining operational nuclear power plants and provides decommissioning services through its TLG Services subsidiary, brought in $55 million ($0.31 per share) in earned net income in the quarter; that was up from $8 million ($0.04 per share) in 2016. Operational earnings landed at $81 million ($0.45 per share) in the third quarter, rising from $35 million ($0.19 per share) a year ago.
Minus the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York state, which Entergy sold to Exelon in the first quarter of the year, “revenue from nuclear plants increased due to higher capacity prices,” according to the earnings report.
Entergy intends to close all of its nuclear power plants in coming years, starting with the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts on May 31, 2019, and then the Indian Point Energy Center in 2020-2021. Closure of the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan was recently pushed back from October 2018 to spring 2022 after the dissolution of an agreement for state utility Consumers Energy to buy the companies’ power purchase agreement.
“While we certainly appreciate the merits of terminating the PPA early, any termination must appropriately compensate us for the value of the above market contract,” CEO Leo Denault said during Entergy’s earnings conference call with financial analysts. “This decision to continue to operate the plant will preserve value for our owners, while extending our exit from the merchant nuclear business by only a year.”
