Add Southern Co. to the list of electric utilities seeing sales hurt by President Donald Trump’s trade wars.
Southern’s electricity sales to industrial customers dropped 2% during the first half of the year due in part to trade disputes and a strong U.S. dollar, the company reported Wednesday. It was a rare down note in an otherwise positive quarter for the utility owner, which beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 2.6%.
“Trade skirmishes are a vacuum to good capital deployment,” Southern Chief Financial Officer Andrew Evans told analysts on a conference call Wednesday.