Despite a prolonged outage at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Plant in Arizona, Albuquerque, NM-based PNM Resources Wednesday reported increased second quarter profits of $17.4 million, or 25 cents/diluted share, compared with $12.5 million, or 20 cents/diluted share, for the second quarter in 2005.

The unexpected outage of Palo Verde, in which PNM’s utility has a significant stake, caused consolidated margin for the second quarter to decrease by $6.8 million as a results of the added costs of alternative power. In addition, warmer weather and lower usage reduced gas margins for Public Service Company of New Mexico by 7.9%, the parent company said.

“Strong performance at PNM’s utility coal-fired generating plants in New Mexico –San Juan Generating Station and the Four Corners Plant — helped offset the impact of the Unit No.1 outage at Palo Verde,” said PNM Resources CEO Jeff Sterba.

“In addition, we had solid PNM retail electric load growth for the second consecutive quarter, and on the competitive side, the additions of the Twin Oaks Power and Luna Energy facilities added to [this] quarter’s results, while First Choice Power continues to show strong performance and was a major contributor this quarter,” Sterba said.

Total revenues jumped substantially for both the second quarter and the six-month-year-to-date –hitting $546 million in the second quarter, compared with $405 million the same period in 2005, and $1.2 billion for the first six months this year, compared to $833 million for the first half of last year.

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