Evergy Profit Rises 23% as Adjusted Growth Cools From Q1 Pace
Evergy posted second-quarter GAAP earnings of $0.91 a share, up from $0.74 a year earlier, even as adjusted profit growth slowed to 7% from 25% in the first quarter.
Evergy (EVRG) reported second-quarter net income of $215.0 million, or $0.91 a share, up from $171.3 million, or $0.74 a share, a year earlier, a 23% increase. The Kansas and Missouri utility holding company's adjusted earnings, which strip out one-time items, rose 7% to $208.5 million, or $0.88 a share, from $191.1 million, or $0.82 a share, in the second quarter of 2025.
The adjusted growth rate marked a sharp deceleration from earlier in the year. Adjusted earnings per share grew 25% year-over-year in the first quarter, to $0.69 from $0.55, before slowing to roughly 7% in the second quarter. For the first six months of 2026, adjusted earnings per share reached $1.57, up 15% from $1.37 in the same period of 2025, with adjusted earnings of $370.3 million versus $318.9 million.
A favorable swing in Evergy's clean-energy investment portfolio widened the gap between GAAP and adjusted results in the quarter. The company recorded net realized gains of $7.9 million on early-stage clean energy investments, compared with unrealized and impairment losses of $25.4 million in the prior-year quarter, a reconciling swing of roughly $33 million that was excluded from adjusted earnings. Evergy is also in the process of exiting those non-regulated clean energy investments, a move that generated $0.6 million in disposal-related costs through the first half of 2026. Separately, the company disclosed a $10.3 million pretax loss, or $0.05 a share, tied to its first-quarter repurchase of $244.1 million in principal of convertible notes, a new adjusting item with no comparable figure in prior-year results.
Higher revenue from large customers drove results in the quarter, alongside recovery of regulated capital investments and weather-normalized demand growth, partially offset by higher operations-and-maintenance and depreciation expense. That driver set mirrored the first quarter's, with one exception: mild winter weather was no longer a headwind, a factor that had weighed on first-quarter results.
Evergy's large-customer pipeline continued to build incrementally. The company had signed four electric service agreements with large customers by its February 2026 release and a fifth by May, and it expects to execute at least one more such agreement in 2026. Kansas and Missouri regulators approved large-load power-service tariffs in the fourth quarter of 2025, establishing a premium-rate framework for new large customers that underpins that pipeline.
Evergy reaffirmed its 2026 adjusted earnings guidance of $4.14 to $4.34 a share for a third consecutive release, unchanged since it was first set in February 2026. That guidance followed a downward revision to 2025's outlook, narrowed in November 2025 to $3.92-$4.02 from an initial $3.92-$4.12 range because of weather headwinds, before the company set the higher 2026 range. Evergy also raised its long-term adjusted earnings growth target to 6%-8% or higher through 2030, up from the 4%-6% target through 2029 it had maintained in 2025, while keeping 2028 as the year it expects growth to exceed 8%.
The company's quarterly dividend stands at $0.695 a share, up 4% from $0.6675 a year earlier, an increase first implemented in the third quarter of 2025 and held flat since.