Jefferies says investor confidence in utilities shaken after DeepSeek emergence

PPL

28/01/2025 13:20

** Jefferies says after shares of power companies were down
almost 20% on Monday, hurt by emergence of low-cost Chinese
artificial intelligence model DeepSeek, investor confidence is
shaken
    ** Brokerage adds that post tech selloff, it sees merit from
integrated utilities over transmission and distribution
utilities
    ** Expects positive developments from Exelon  EXC.O ,
Southern Co  SO.N , PPL  PPL.N  and pipelines of data centers to
be under even greater scrutiny for each company
    ** "How companies are updating and refreshing the data
center pipeline (given the new DeepSeek uncertainty) vs
containing stale data will provide insights into the confidence
across the board," brokerage says
    Brokerage changes PT on the following firms:
    
 Company              New PT      Old PT      Upside/downsi
                                              de to stock's
                                              last close
 Avista  AVA.N        $39         $40         5.8%
 Eversource Energy    $47         $52         19.3%
  ES.N                                        downside
 Idacorp  IDA.N       $118        $129        5% downside
 ONE Gas  OGS.N       $76         $79         7.6%
 Pinnacle West        $104        $106        18.8%
  PNW.N                                       
 Portland General     $42         $47         1% downside
 Electric  POR.N                              
 
 (Reporting by Pooja Menon in Bengaluru)
 ((Pooja.Menon@thomsonreuters.com;))