OAKLAND — PG&E’s profits and revenues rose during 2025, but at a reduced pace compared with prior years, in a sign that the utility’s vow to rein in bill increases has begun to materialize.
The investor-owned utility posted a profit of $2.59 billion in 2025, 4.8% higher than the $2.48 billion in profit in 2024, PG&E reported Thursday as part of the release of its latest financial results.
Shares of PG&E jumped 2.7% on Thursday and finished at $17.56. Over the most recent 12-month period, PG&E’s shares are up 9.5%.
The company offered an improved 2026 outlook for profits in a range of $1.64 to $1.66 a share with a midpoint of $1.65 a share – higher than the prior estimates that ranged from $1.62 to $1.66 with a midpoint of $1.64.
Thursday’s news came on the heels of the company’s report at the end of 2025 that monthly bills for residential customers who receive combined electricity and gas services would drop starting in January.
“We reduced our bills in January,” PG&E Chief Executive Officer Patricia Poppe said in an interview with Bay Area News Group. “Bottom line, electric bills have gone down four times since 2024. That’s the equivalent of a reduction of $20 a month for electric bills.”
PG&E stated in materials prepared with the earnings report that monthly bills were expected to be in a range of unchanged to a 3% increase during the course of 2026.
“We are looking at zero bill inflation,” Poppe said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts. “That’s a number to be proud of.”
Some critics of PG&E, however, believe that the company’s profits remain too high and that its primary regulator, the state Public Utilities Commission, has failed in its role as a watchdog.
“PG&E continues to post record profits year after year after year because the PUC continues to fail to rein in their profligate and unnecessary spending, all designed to boost their profits and pick Californians’ pockets,” said Loretta Lynch, a former PUC commissioner.
Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, said PG&E’s profits have emerged at a time when customers must still wrestle with significant power failures.
“PG&E needs to match its outstanding performance for shareholders with reliable service for its customers, hundreds of thousands of whom have lost power unexpectedly and repeatedly over the past few months,” Toney said.
Toney said the state Legislature needs to act to help rein in profits for California’s big utilities.
“PG&E’s record-breaking profits should motivate state lawmakers to adopt legislation for public financing and other strategies to reduce costs for capital investments and pass along the savings to residential and business customers,” Toney said.
PG&E reported that revenue totaled $24.94 billion in 2025, up 2.1% from 2024.
Electricity operations revenue rose 2.8% and totaled $18.32 billion in 2025, PG&E stated. Revenue from natural gas operations totaled $6.62 billion, up 0.1% from the year before.
The increases are at a reduced pace compared to previous years.
Overall revenue in 2024 was roughly unchanged from 2023. But in 2023, overall revenue hopped higher by 12.7% compared with 2022.
Electricity revenue in 2024 was up 2.2% over the prior year. In 2023, electricity revenue skyrocketed by 15.7% compared with 2022.
In 2024, gas revenue fell 5.7% compared with 2023. Gas revenue totals jumped 5.8% in 2023 compared with the year before.
Oakland-based PG&E also said it’s making progress to connect major electricity users to the grid.
The company said large electricity projects totaling 3.55 gigawatts were in the final engineering stage at the end of the fourth quarter, which lasted from October through December of 2025. That’s up from 1.6 gigawatts of large-load projects that were in the final engineering stage in the third quarter that ended in September 2025.
PG&E officials said these large projects, as well as several other endeavors, all have the goal of keeping customer bills rising slowly or even decreasing.
Nationwide, reports have emerged to suggest utility bills are rising as demand for electricity jumps due to data centers that help power future tech hubs for artificial intelligence and other high-level computing.
California state regulations, however, might avoid that costly dynamic. According to Poppe, regulators have obliged data center operators to pay for the anticipated electricity load before the complex requires the power.
“The data centers pay in advance, and we refund them as the load comes online,” Poppe said. “When the data center does come online, the price for the electricity is set correctly. This means everybody’s bills go down when the new electricity load goes on the grid.”
PG&E also is not encouraging development of vast data centers that are miles wide. Instead, the company is encouraging data centers that are efficient in size and well-located.
“We are building data centers that are near the tech companies,” Poppe said. “This way there is less risk when these projects come to fruition. It’s a more affordable way to build out to infrastructure.”
The utility believes that even more relief is on the horizon for customers as additional temporary expenses vanish from the rate base.
“Bills are scheduled to go down again in March,” Poppe said. “More things are rolling off the bills.”
