Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) crew work to restore power after the Park Fire burned through the area near Paynes Creek, in California, U.S. August 3, 2024. REUTERS/Fred Greaves

By Sumit Saha

(Reuters) -Utility firm PG&E Corp on Thursday narrowly missed Wall Street estimates for second-quarter profit, hit by an increase in operating and maintenance costs.

The company said its total operating and maintenance costs rose 3.7% to $2.86 billion, adding that wildfire-related claims, net of recoveries and the utility's wildfire fund expense increased from a year earlier.

PG&E has been blamed for sparking numerous wildfires, including some of California's most deadly, and has been making investments to improve the reliability of its power grid.

In a wildfire mitigation plan filed in March for the 2026-2028 period, the utility said it aims to build nearly 700 miles of underground power lines and complete 500 miles of additional wildfire safety system upgrades between 2025 and 2026.

The company has deployed over 10,000 sensors in high-risk areas to detect failures early and reduce outages, CEO Patti Poppe said on a post-earnings call.

The utility also said it was working to serve 10 gigawatts (GW) of new electricity demand from data center projects over the next ten years.

Of the 10 GW, 17 data center projects totaling about 1.5 GW are in the final engineering phase and projected to begin operations between 2026 and 2030.

Electric utilities across the U.S. are experiencing a surge in power capacity requests as tech giants search nationwide for locations to build data centers to meet the growing computational demands of artificial intelligence.

The company said it added nearly 3,300 new customers in the second quarter to its electric grid system.

Its total quarterly operating revenue fell to $5.90 billion, from $5.99 billion a year earlier.

On an adjusted basis, PG&E reported a quarterly profit of 31 cents per share for the three-month period ended June 30, missing Wall Street expectations by 1 cent per share, according to LSEG.

The company's shares were down 1.3% in afternoon trading.

(Reporting by Sumit Saha in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)