Will PPL's Infrastructure Upgrades Boost Its Reliability & Earnings?

PPL Corporation PPL is benefiting from its focus on transmission and distribution through enhanced grid reliability, capacity for increased energy demand and opportunities for strategic investments. This initiative to improve infrastructure, particularly in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, is driving earnings growth and improving customer satisfaction.

The transmission and distribution upgrades enable PPL to handle increased energy demand, especially from data centers and other industries, positioning it to capitalize on future growth opportunities.

PPL is investing heavily in upgrading its transmission and distribution infrastructure, including smart grid technologies like advanced metering and automated switching. This leads to a more reliable and resilient energy grid, reducing the frequency and duration of power outages. From 2025 to 2028, PPL intends to invest $20 billion to upgrade infrastructure and improve service quality. The capital investment for 2025 and 2026 is expected to be $4.3 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively. 

Since 2012, investments in stronger infrastructure have led to a 93% decrease in outage frequency, 89% fewer lightning-related outages and 64% fewer equipment failures (all stats compare 2023 to 2012). PPL is the first U.S. utility to fully integrate Dynamic Line Rating (“DLR”) technology into real-time and market operations. DLR enables real-time performance adjustments to deliver more power over existing lines, reducing congestion and deferring costly infrastructure upgrades.

PPL is strategically leveraging its transmission and distribution infrastructure to capitalize on the opportunities presented by data center growth and the broader transition to a cleaner energy future, while also improving reliability and customer satisfaction.

Utilities Strengthening Transmission & Distribution

Some other utility companies that are also focused on improving their transmission and distribution systems have been discussed below.

FirstEnergy FE: With planned investments of $28 billion between 2025 and 2029, the company will install advanced equipment and technologies that will strengthen and modernize its transmission and distribution infrastructure.

NextEra Energy’s NEE subsidiary, Florida Power & Light, plans to invest nearly $21.7 billion in transmission and distribution projects from 2025 to 2029 to support customer growth and continue hardening the energy grid. This will allow the company to provide power to customers even during storms.

PPL’s Earnings Estimates

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 and 2026 EPS indicates an increase of 7.69% and 8.33%, respectively, year over year.

PPL Stock Trading at a Premium

PPL is trading at a premium relative to the industry, with a forward 12-month price-to-earnings of 19.32X compared with the industry average of 15.04X.

PPL Stock Price Performance

In the past three months, PPL’s shares have risen 9.1% compared with the industry’s 3.1% growth.

PPL’s Zacks Rank

PPL currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

 

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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