Xcel Energy’s Colorado subsidiary made a $903 million operating profit in 2025 that was trimmed by a $295 million write-off for settlements of Marshall fire lawsuits — even as sales of electricity and natural gas declined.
The 2025 profits, reported by Public Service Company of Colorado in a federal filing, comes as the company is seeking a $365 million increase in electricity rates and a $190 million addition to natural gas bills.
Both rate cases are pending before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
“The information in this filing shatters any illusion that the company and its shareholders are under any distress,” said Joseph Pereira, the deputy director of the Colorado Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate.
“This demonstrates the company’s pending rate requests are out of touch and unreasonable by any measure,” Pereira said. The UCA represents residential and small commercial customers in rate cases.
The net income of $678 million, however, was lowest in the last four years, according to filings with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission by Public Service of Colorado, or PSCo.
Xcel Energy, PSCo’s parent company, posted record-breaking profits in 2025, with net earnings topping $2 billion. PSCo, one of four Xcel Energy electric and gas subsidiaries, accounted for a little more than a third of Xcel Energy’s earnings.
The increase in profits comes even though the Colorado subsidiary is selling less electricity to its 1.6 million electric customers and less gas to its 1.5 million gas customers.
In 2025, electricity sales were down slightly to 17,579 watt-hours while revenue per customer was up a bit to $2,011. Those numbers are part of a trend as electricity sales since 2020 are down 7% and revenue per customer is up more than 9%.
The story is similar for natural gas with sales to retail customers down 11% since 2020 to 90 million British thermal units in 2025. Revenue for each million BTUs used by residential customers, however, has jumped over the same period by more than 50%.
Households are also paying more for each kilowatt-hour of electricity with the charge rising nearly 25% to 14.27 cents over the five years — about the same as the rate of inflation.
“Electric revenues are impacted by changing sales, fluctuations in the price of natural gas and coal, regulatory outcomes, market prices and seasonality,” the company said in its annual report.
The company, however, doesn’t make most of its money from electricity and gas, but from investing in new plants and powerlines, as well as investments in wildfire protection and electric vehicles — and getting customers to pay for them with a return on each investment.
“Higher ongoing earnings primarily reflect higher recovery of electric and natural gas infrastructure investments and increased” funds used during construction,” the annual report states.
Those investments are needed to insure reliable service and meet Colorado’s clean energy goals, Xcel Energy said.
“We continue to invest in Colorado’s electric and gas system to ensure that we can deliver our customers with the clean, reliable, safe and low-cost energy they need to power their homes and businesses,” the company said in a statement.
In 2025, PSCo’s property, plant and equipment rose 19% year-over-year to $27.8 billion. Since 2020, that base of capital investment, upon which rates are set, is up 60%, according to filings.
Xcel Energy said it plans to invest another $17 billion in Colorado in the next five years, adding that in 2025 it made $5 billion in new clean energy power plants part of its goal of replacing its coal plants.
”These investments are rigorously reviewed by the Commission, with input from consumer and community advocates,” the company said.
Xcel cleared to build renewable energy projects before tax credits expire
On Feb. 18, the PUC also approved 4,100 MW of new generation — a mix of wind, solar, natural gas and storage — to be fast-tracked in an effort to get federal tax credits before they expire.
The proposed gas rate increase would raise gas customers’ bills by an average $7.59 to $74.41 a month to pay for safety improvements, meet rising operating and maintenance costs and provide investor returns.
The electricity rate increase Xcel Energy is seeking would raise bills about 10% to $110 a month to recover infrastructure investments, operating costs and lost revenue sources.
“Enough is enough. Coloradans are being crushed under the weight of gas and power bills that get bigger every year,” Sarah Tresedder, senior climate and energy organizer for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “The PUC needs to put a stop to the bleeding.”
The company said that the average Colorado residential customer’s electric bills are 39% lower than the national average. That average, however, includes some very high-cost states such as Massachusetts, with an average charge of 30 cents a kilowatt-hour, California at nearly 35 cents a kilowatt-hour and almost 42 cents in Hawaii, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Xcel Energy’s Colorado rate of 14.27 cents a kilowatt-hour in 2025 is just about the same as the eight-state Mountain West average, according to the energy administration.
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