Sempra expects 20% increase to Oncor’s capex plan, driven by load growth

“It’s too soon to tell exactly” how the results of the midterm elections will impact Oncor, said CEO Allen Nye. “We continue to believe that both parties want a strong and growing Texas.”

Oncor’s base capital plan of $47.5 billion for the next five years is expected to increase by 20% in its upcoming annual update, driven by “continued strong customer and load growth from a variety of sectors, all over our system,” said Oncor CEO Allen Nye during a Thursday third-quarter earnings call from the company’s majority owner, Sempra.

Sempra CEO and chairman Jeffrey Martin said during the call that Oncor — a utility with more than 14 million customers in Texas — continues to see “remarkably strong demand growth, having recently reached a new peak on its system of 33 GW, a 6% increase over the prior record set last year.”

“This increase underscores the robust economic growth that's occurring in Texas,” Martin said. The state’s growth is “broad-based,” he said, and “data centers are obviously the lion's share of it, but... there is a significant amount of non-data center growth.”

In response to an analyst question about the potential impact to state data center growth and Oncor itself due to the results of the midterm elections, Martin said, “We look forward to working with the new administration in Texas.”

“It's too soon to tell exactly what it all means,” Nye said. “But generally, the way I think about it, we provide an essential service that's needed regardless of the party in power … We continue to believe that both parties want a strong and growing Texas.”

When it came to state headwinds, Martin voiced concern about California, where Sempra subsidiaries San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Co. face financial risk as a result of ongoing uncertainty in the state regarding wildfire liability.

The California legislature's failure to pass a bill in its last session to reduce the effects of wildfire liabilities on SDG&E and other utilities is a “significant adverse credit development,” Fitch Ratings said in a September report.

As Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Southern California Edison's CEOs did during their own third-quarter earnings calls, Martin stressed the need for the California legislature to pass legislation on wildfire liability reform. The credit downgrades will “constrain future utility service,” he said, and the situation “clearly underscores that inaction doesn't work, and that there's a real need for a timely solution.”

In its third-quarter earnings filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Sempra noted that the scope of potential damages caused by the January 2025 Eaton fire “could materially reduce or exhaust the Wildfire Fund. Edison stated that it is currently unable to reasonably estimate a range of potential losses associated with the Eaton fire.”

“Accordingly, SDG&E is unable to estimate a range of potential loss resulting from any reduction in available coverage from the Wildfire Fund,” the filing continued.

Martin also noted that the California Public Utilities Commission last week issued a proposed decision denying Sempra’s petition for modification of a 2024 general rate case decision, in which Sempra alleges that CPUC made an error in not including an associated revenue requirement.

Sempra aims to have CPUC correct the error so that its California utilities can collect $188 million in associated revenue in 2027, said CFO Karen Sedgwick during the earnings call.

“This is just a 2027 issue because we have a new [general rate case] starting rates in January of 2028, so that won't carry over,” Sedgwick said. “It's a one-year issue. We think it's a mistake. We think it gets fixed. If for any reason it couldn't, we're going to try to mitigate that.”

Martin said the CPUC’s decision was “proposed … It's not final. There's a series of regulatory avenues that we will appeal to try to get the right answer.”

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