Shares of companies in the energy sector edged up as oil prices retreated from Thursday's highs but still ended the week sharply higher on the escalation of fighting between Iran and the U.S.
SLB logged higher revenue in 2Q, as higher offshore activity and strong demand across its quickly growing data-center business helped to offset continued disruptions across the Middle East. The oilfield-services company, formerly known as Schlumberger, on Friday posted a profit of $786 million, or 52 cents a share. That's down from a profit of $1.01 billion, or 74 cents a share, a year earlier. Stripping out certain one-time items, earnings came in at 55 cents a share. Analysts polled by FactSet expected adjusted earnings of 51 cents a share. Revenue rose 5% to $8.97 billion, ahead of Wall Street models for $8.67 billion. North America revenue jumped nearly 36%, to $2.24 billion, offsetting international revenue, which slipped 2.6%, to $6.67 billion.
America has a record amount of electricity generation under development. Building it is becoming far more expensive. Surging demand for electricity from AI data centers-combined with equipment backlogs, permitting delays, tariffs and yearslong waits to connect to the grid-are pushing up construction costs for every type of power plant. Costs for building natural-gas plants and large-scale solar and wind projects have increased more than 10% since last year, according to Lazard's annual report on electricity-generation costs. That poses a growing problem for consumers already frustrated by rising electricity bills. The higher cost of building power plants today will eventually work its way into monthly utility bills as companies recover those investments over time. Electricity prices rose 4% in June from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, outpacing overall inflation. Demand growth is "dominating everything in energy," said George Bilicic, Lazard's vice chairman of investment banking and global head of power, energy and infrastructure.
