Eversource Energy reported third-quarter results Wednesday, November 4, that pull in two directions at once. Non-GAAP recurring earnings were $346.0 million, or $0.92 per share, down from $442.5 million, or $1.19 per share, a year earlier — a decline of nearly 23%. Revenue fell 7.5% to $2.98 billion. And yet management narrowed full-year 2026 guidance upward, to $4.62 to $4.70 per share from the $4.52 to $4.72 range set on March 31, lifting the midpoint to $4.66. The quarter was weaker; the outlook, on management’s telling, is firmer. Reconciling the two means looking past the print to the regulatory calendar that now dominates this company.
Start with the two EPS numbers. GAAP and non-GAAP earnings were identical this quarter at $0.92 per share, because there were no non-GAAP adjustments in the period. A year earlier the two measures diverged sharply: GAAP earnings of $0.99 per share against recurring earnings of $1.19, with the $0.20 gap reflecting charges tied to the offshore wind divestiture. The comparable measure fell 27 cents a share.
The miss against expectations was modest but real: the Zacks consensus sat near $0.97 per share, so $0.92 came in about 5 cents light, and revenue of $2.98 billion fell well short of the roughly $3.41 billion consensus. For a predominantly regulated utility, revenue is mostly pass-through supply and transmission cost recovery, so the earnings miss is the number that matters — and it was broad-based, with every utility segment earning less than a year ago.
The guidance math, updated
Guidance is the promise that matters most, and here management did something unusual: it narrowed the range and raised the floor at the same time the quarter disappointed. The old range, $4.52 to $4.72, was 20 cents wide. The new one, $4.62 to $4.70, is 8 cents wide, with the floor up 10 cents and the ceiling down 2. The midpoint moved to $4.66 from $4.62. A narrowed range is a confidence signal, and a raised floor is the stronger half of it. The ceiling coming down 2 cents is the honest footnote: the top of the old range is no longer in reach, but the bottom has been lifted well above where it was.
Do the arithmetic the checklist prescribes. Nine-month recurring earnings stand at $3.52 per share, against $3.64 in the first nine months of 2025. Subtract $3.52 from the new range and the fourth quarter must deliver $1.10 to $1.18 per share to land inside it; the $4.66 midpoint implies about $1.14. That is a heavy winter quarter, but a plausible one: gas distribution earnings are seasonally weighted toward the heating season, and the Massachusetts and New Hampshire base rate increases are now flowing through.
The long-term target was reaffirmed alongside the guidance: 5% to 7% cumulative long-term earnings growth through 2030, now measured off the revised $4.66 midpoint as the base year, with management expecting growth toward the upper half of that range by 2028. The same rate compounded off $4.66 is a different destination than off the $4.80 to $4.95 range projected in February, before the FERC decision forced a reset. The growth rate survived; the starting point did not.
The segments: a clean sweep downward
Electric distribution, the largest contributor, earned $200.9 million in the quarter, or $0.53 per share, down from $221.6 million, or $0.60, a year earlier. The driver is specific and regulatory: roughly $40 million of disallowed storm costs from the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority’s July 29 final decision on Connecticut Light & Power’s storm prudency proceeding. Higher depreciation, interest, and property taxes added to the drag, partly offset by base rate increases in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and continued distribution investment.
Electric transmission earned $182.0 million, or $0.48 per share, against $185.5 million, or $0.50, a year earlier. The decline is small in dollars and large in meaning, because it is the visible cost of the FERC decision that has defined Eversource’s year. In March, FERC cut the base return on equity for New England transmission owners to 9.57% from 10.57%, and the lower allowed return, together with higher interest expense, more than offset continued investment in the transmission system. Nine-month transmission earnings were $590.0 million against $593.0 million — essentially flat.
Natural gas distribution posted a seasonal loss of $43.4 million, or $0.11 per share, against a $16.8 million loss, or $0.05, in the prior-year quarter. The wider loss is largely timing: a change in seasonal rate design at the Massachusetts gas businesses shifted revenue recovery across quarters, and higher depreciation added to the gap. Over nine months, gas earned $281.6 million against $236.9 million a year earlier, helped by base rate increases in Massachusetts and Connecticut effective November 1, 2025.
Water contributed nothing in the quarter: Eversource sold Aquarion Water Company on June 30, 2026, and the segment’s absence is a 5-cent year-over-year drag in the reconciliation. The sale also produced a $111.4 million non-cash after-tax charge, or $0.30 per share, in the nine-month results. Parent and other companies earned $6.5 million against $33.3 million a year earlier, on a higher effective tax rate and higher interest expense.
Nine months of charges, in one place
The nine-month GAAP results are where the year’s damage is concentrated. Reported GAAP earnings for the first nine months were $1.01 billion, or $2.67 per share, against $1.27 billion, or $3.44, in the same period of 2025. Recurring earnings were $3.52 per share against $3.64 — a 12-cent decline on the comparable measure, against a 77-cent decline on the GAAP measure. The $0.85 gap is three charges, all excluded from recurring earnings: the $0.30 per share Aquarion sale charge, a $0.43 per share charge for higher expected future payments tied to the 2024 offshore wind divestiture, and a $0.12 per share charge for estimated refunds following the FERC return decision.
The Aquarion sale is done. The offshore wind charge is an estimate of future payments under the September 2024 sale of South Fork Wind and Revolution Wind; management said the reserve is adequate, which, if it holds, closes the largest remaining tail risk from the divestiture, and Revolution Wind has reached commercial operation. The FERC refund charge is the least closed of the three, and it leads directly to the most important date on the company’s calendar.
The FERC return: November 30
Eversource is awaiting a FERC decision on its request for an 11.39% prospective base return on equity for its transmission business, filed as a Section 205 proposal after the March decision cut the allowed return to 9.57%. The briefing process was completed at the end of September, and a new rate is scheduled to take effect November 30, subject to refund if FERC ultimately sets a lower figure. Parties to the proceeding have proposed returns in the 9% range, against Eversource’s requested 11.39%, so the decision will land somewhere between a near-complete reversal of the March cut and a ratification of it. The difference between 9.57% and 11.39% on a transmission rate base of Eversource’s size is worth tens of millions of dollars a year in earnings — which is why the quarter’s small transmission decline matters more than its size: it is the run-rate cost of the return Eversource is currently allowed, and November 30 begins the process of deciding what the run rate will be instead.
The refund exposure behind the March decision is the larger, quieter risk. Management cautioned that GAAP accounting may force recognition of roughly $880 million in incremental long-dated FERC refunds before the D.C. Circuit rules on the appeal, possibly in late summer or early fall of 2027, with refunds due by May 2027. The company has set aside only a fraction of that exposure on its books, on the view that the larger refund is not probable. That is a disclosed judgment call, but the exposure dwarfs a single quarter’s earnings and will hang over the stock until the court rules.
Connecticut: the rate case that carries the plan
If FERC sets the transmission return, Connecticut sets the distribution future, and the numbers there are larger. Connecticut Light & Power filed its first electric distribution rate case since 2017 with PURA on July 14, 2026, seeking $727 million in additional annual revenue — an amount that would raise the average residential bill by about 18%. Strip out the deferred storm costs folded into that total, and the underlying distribution request is $451 million, or roughly an 11% residential increase. About two-thirds of the deficiency — roughly $300 million — is system investment in grid reliability, resiliency, and modernization. Another 17% is annual storm restoration and vegetation management, and operating and maintenance expense is about $50 million, or 12% of the request. New rates are expected to take effect in July 2027, and the company is proposing a four-year, performance-based plan.
The storm costs explain both the quarter’s distribution decline and the political temperature around the case. PURA’s July 29 final decision on the 2018–2023 storm prudency proceeding approved roughly $861 million of deferred storm costs for recovery but disallowed more than $500 million of what the company sought, including over $300 million of interest the regulators argued ratepayers should not bear. The roughly $40 million disallowance that hit the third quarter is the earnings echo of that decision. The approved costs will be recovered through securitization — long-term, low-interest bonds — and Eversource expects about $1.1 billion in proceeds from Connecticut and New Hampshire filings combined, targeted for mid-2027 or early 2028. CEO Joe Nolan called the PURA decision constructive on the call, praising the path to securitization. That is the language of a company that lost half a billion dollars of its ask and is choosing to call the remainder a win.
The capital plan: bigger, and the market is asked to fund it
Against that regulatory backdrop, Eversource reaffirmed its $26.5 billion infrastructure investment plan for 2026 through 2030 — $2.3 billion larger than the prior five-year forecast of $24.2 billion, with the increase concentrated in electric and natural gas distribution investment. Management identified a further $1.7 billion of opportunities beyond the plan, including roughly $1 billion of Connecticut advanced metering infrastructure, plus an ISO New England–selected Eversource–Avangrid transmission project worth about $700 million to Eversource. A full capital plan update is promised with fourth-quarter results. Funding held up: funds-from-operations-to-debt of 14.2% under S&P’s measure and 15.4% under Moody’s at the end of September, both above the agencies’ downgrade thresholds, with no near-term equity needed and the planned $800 million to $1.1 billion of issuance through 2030 back-half weighted.
Eversource is asking the market to price a company that will spend $26.5 billion over five years on regulated infrastructure while its two largest regulatory proceedings are unresolved. The spending is the growth story: rate base is the engine, and the 5% to 7% long-term growth target is, in substance, a claim that regulators will let that rate base earn its authorized return. If FERC holds the transmission return near 9.57% and PURA cuts the Connecticut request the way it cut the storm costs, the plan still gets built but earns less than the growth target assumes; if the decisions go the other way, the same plan earns more.
The quarter in context
Eversource is the fourth large regulated utility in this publication’s third-quarter coverage to report a quarter defined more by its regulatory calendar than by its operations — Dominion’s by the NextEra merger hearing, PSEG’s by a narrow miss and a reframed filing, Exelon’s by a transmission opportunity. Eversource’s belongs in the same frame but with the polarity reversed: the operations were the soft part, the regulatory calendar is the hopeful part, and the guidance decision is management’s way of saying the second half will be better than the third quarter was.
None of this is investment advice, and nothing here recommends buying, selling, or holding any security. The quarter, in short: a $0.92 recurring print against a roughly $0.97 consensus, guidance narrowed to $4.62 to $4.70 with the midpoint raised to $4.66, a $26.5 billion capital plan reaffirmed, and two regulatory decisions — a FERC return effective November 30 and a Connecticut rate case effective next July — that will determine what that plan is worth. The quarter was weaker. The plan is bigger. The decisions are pending.
What to watch next
Five markers, in calendar order. First, the FERC return decision and the November 30 effective date — the rate that takes effect, the refund exposure attached to it, and any signal about the D.C. Circuit appeal. Second, the fourth quarter against guidance: $1.10 to $1.18 per share lands inside the range, with about $1.14 the midpoint. Third, the Connecticut rate case — testimony, settlement discussions, and any signal from PURA about the $451 million request before new rates take effect in July 2027. Fourth, storm cost securitization, targeted for mid-2027 or early 2028, and the roughly $1.1 billion of proceeds attached to it. Fifth, the fourth-quarter call in February 2027, when the capital plan gets its promised update and the company will have to say, with the FERC decision in hand, what the next five years actually earn.