Public Service Enterprise Group reports third-quarter 2026 results on Monday, November 2, before the market opens, with an earnings call at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. This article publishes before that release, so nothing here is a result. It is a preview: what the consensus expects, what the guidance math implies, and which questions on the call actually matter.
Start, as this publication’s earnings-report checklist prescribes, with the two EPS numbers — except this morning, neither exists yet. What exists is the expectation. Consensus estimates cluster around non-GAAP operating earnings of roughly $1.18 per share on revenue near $3.20 billion, with the Zacks consensus a touch higher at $1.21 per share on revenue of $3.30 billion. That range, not any single point estimate, is the honest benchmark: different data providers count different analysts, and the Zacks figure has itself been revised down about 6.5% over the past 30 days, a reminder that consensus is a moving snapshot rather than a fixed bar.
The comparison point is a year ago. In the third quarter of 2025, PSEG reported non-GAAP operating earnings of $1.13 per share, against GAAP net income of $1.24 per share. A consensus print near $1.18 would therefore be modest growth over the prior-year quarter — roughly 4 to 5% on the operating measure — rather than the step change the second quarter delivered. That tempering is worth noting before the release, because it sets up the most common preview trap: treating a quarter that merely meets a lowered consensus as a disappointment, or a quarter that beats it as a breakthrough, when the underlying regulated business moves in increments, not leaps.
The guidance math
Guidance is the promise that matters most, and PSEG’s has not moved all year. Management has maintained full-year 2026 non-GAAP operating earnings guidance of $4.28 to $4.40 per share, initiated in February against a 2025 result of $4.05 per share, and reaffirmed it again with the second-quarter report. The company also reaffirmed its longer-term target of 6% to 8% compound annual growth in non-GAAP operating earnings through 2030.
Do the arithmetic the checklist prescribes. Through the first half of 2026, PSEG had banked $2.41 per share of non-GAAP operating earnings. Add a third quarter at the consensus of roughly $1.18, and the nine-month total lands near $3.59. That leaves a fourth quarter of roughly $0.69 to $0.81 per share to land inside the full-year range — a plausible winter quarter for a utility whose regulated earnings are seasonally weighted toward the summer, and a range with room on both sides. The guidance does not require a heroic fourth quarter, and it does not survive a disastrous one. That is the shape of a promise management expects to keep, and the market will read any narrowing or reaffirmation on Monday’s call against exactly that math.
Watch, too, whether management aims inside the range. The second-quarter report reaffirmed the range without narrowing it, and other utilities this earnings season have used the third-quarter print to aim at a midpoint or better. A narrowing toward the top half would signal confidence in the fourth quarter’s regulated earnings; a flat reaffirmation would say the range still holds but the company is not yet ready to spend its margin. Either is defensible. The signal is in which one management chooses, and how specifically it explains the choice.
The rate case calendar
The most consequential item on PSEG’s calendar is not in the third-quarter numbers at all. It is the planned New Jersey base rate case, which management has said it expects to file before the end of 2026 — moved ahead of a previous 2029 deadline — to update its cost of service and recover distribution rate base investments made since its last case. The last comprehensive electric and gas base rate case settled in 2024, with new rates effective in October of that year, and it is the foundation of the earnings growth PSEG has reported since.
Read the rate case as the checklist prescribes: a filed case is what the utility is asking for, a pending decision is what the commission will rule on and when, and the recovery mechanisms are where large cost items get settled. This filing, when it arrives, will be the document that translates PSEG’s capital spending into future earnings, and the terms will matter as much as the timing. New Jersey’s regulatory climate is the variable here. The state has pressed utilities on affordability — residential bills rose sharply from 2024 to 2025 — and the Board of Public Utilities has been scrutinizing utility conduct in regional electricity proceedings. A constructive outcome funds the capital plan; a contentious one stretches the regulatory lag between spending and recovery.
Two smaller regulatory items deserve a line in the preview. First, PSEG said changes to PJM’s transmission cost allocation rules would generate approximately $33 million in savings for its zonal transmission customers from June through December 2026, with an expected annual benefit of approximately $65 million — a customer benefit that also speaks to how transmission costs are being apportioned in the region. Second, the earnings call last quarter flagged a potential annual net-income headwind of roughly $40 million, or about $0.08 per share, from possible changes to the transmission return incentive beginning in 2027. That is a 2027 item, not a third-quarter item, but analysts will probe it on Monday because it sits directly on the growth rate’s path.
The nuclear fleet
PSEG Power’s nuclear fleet is the second engine of the story, and the one with the most moving parts. The fleet — the Salem units and Hope Creek in New Jersey — supplied 7.9 terawatt-hours in the third quarter of 2025 at a 92.4% capacity factor, and 7.8 terawatt-hours in the second quarter of 2026 at a 92.0% capacity factor, following the Salem Unit 2 refueling outage. Third-quarter output will be read against that baseline: capacity factor is the simplest measure of whether the fleet ran when it was supposed to, and a quarter with no major outage should print near the top of the fleet’s historical range.
Three longer-term nuclear items frame the quarter. Hope Creek has moved from an 18-month to a 24-month refueling cycle, after a breaker-to-breaker run of 499 continuous days, which should yield more megawatt-hours and lower operating and maintenance costs over time. The Salem upgrade project aims to add roughly 200 megawatts between 2027 and 2029. And the fleet’s capacity cleared in PJM’s base residual auction at $329 per megawatt-day for the energy year running June 2026 through May 2027, a price that reflects the region’s tightening supply-demand balance. None of these is a third-quarter earnings event. All of them are the reason PSEG Power’s earnings — $83 million of non-GAAP operating earnings in the second quarter, up from $52 million a year earlier — have become a steadier contributor than the merchant-generation label suggests.
The watch item on the call is contracting. Management has previously discussed the potential to contract nuclear output under multi-year agreements, and the question analysts will press is whether any such agreements are advancing. Contracted output would convert merchant exposure into something closer to regulated predictability. Uncontracted output leaves the fleet exposed to power prices that have been favorable lately but are not guaranteed to stay that way. The distinction matters for how the market values the fleet, even if it barely moves a single quarter’s print.
The capital plan and the funding question
The five-year capital plan is the report’s forward-looking core, and PSEG’s is unusually clean in its funding. The total 2026–2030 program is $24 billion to $28 billion, of which $22.5 billion to $25.5 billion is regulated investment at PSE&G — more than 90% of the total — supporting projected compound annual rate-base growth of 6% to 7.5% through 2030 from a year-end 2025 rate base of approximately $36 billion. Regulated investment in 2026 alone is expected to total about $4.2 billion, with roughly $1 billion spent in the second quarter.
The funding claim is the one to test. Management says the program can be funded without issuing new equity or selling assets, which would make PSEG’s growth unusually non-dilutive for a utility of its size. That claim rests on operating cash flow and debt capacity, and it is the reason the balance-sheet questions on Monday’s call matter: funds from operations to debt, the metric the rating agencies watch, and the pace of regulated spending against the $4.2 billion annual target. A plan that is spent on pace without new equity is a plan whose growth rate is arithmetic. A plan that slips, or that requires an equity raise management did not forecast, is a plan whose growth rate is an aspiration.
Two demand-side items round out the capital story. PSEG launched its GridSmart battery program in August 2026, offering incentives for home batteries — a grid-edge investment that improves reliability, manages peak demand, and can defer costlier transmission and distribution upgrades. And the company continues to cite growing electricity demand, including data-center and large-load inquiries, as part of the case for its infrastructure spending. The preview question is whether Monday’s call quantifies that demand any further. A load pipeline with numbers attached is evidence; a load pipeline described only in general terms is a theme.
What to watch
Six markers, in order of consequence. First, the print against consensus: does non-GAAP operating earnings land near $1.18 to $1.21 per share, and does the GAAP-to-operating reconciliation read as housekeeping or as a recurring item? The second quarter’s GAAP figure, $0.67 per share against $0.86 operating, was depressed by the conclusion of the Zero Emission Certificate program in May 2025 — a known, non-recurring distortion, but the kind of gap that deserves a read every quarter. Second, guidance: is the $4.28 to $4.40 range reaffirmed, narrowed, or aimed at? Third, the rate case: does management confirm the before-year-end filing, and with what detail on scope and timing? Fourth, nuclear performance: capacity factor, output, and any contracting progress. Fifth, capital deployment: regulated spending against the $4.2 billion annual target, and any update to the funding claim. Sixth, the transmission items: the cost-allocation savings flowing to customers, and any further word on the 2027 return-incentive headwind.
PSEG’s preview is best read as a progress report on a thesis, not a verdict on it. The regulated business is growing through approved rates and a capital plan that management says needs no new equity; the nuclear fleet is running at high capacity factors with upgrades and a longer fuel cycle ahead; and the rate case due before year-end is the mechanism that converts today’s spending into tomorrow’s earnings. What has not yet arrived is the quarter’s evidence — and that evidence arrives Monday morning, before the market opens, with the call at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. Until then, the expectations are the story, and they should be read as expectations: a consensus near $1.18 per share, a guidance range of $4.28 to $4.40, and a growth target of 6% to 8% through 2030 that the next twelve months of commission proceedings and capital deployment will either confirm or complicate.
None of this is investment advice, and nothing in this analysis recommends buying, selling, or holding any security. It is a reading of what to watch before a report that has not yet been released — a consensus, a guidance range, a rate-case calendar, and a nuclear fleet whose performance will be measured in terawatt-hours and capacity factors, not in headlines.