There is a price to pay for becoming a lean, mean fighting machine, and utilities paid the price in 1994.
A number of electric utilities saw revenues increase last year on the strength of higher sales, but the costs associated with laying off hundreds of employees and downsizing company operations took a significant bite out of earnings.
A PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY survey of the nation's top 20 electric utilities shows an increase in their combined 1994 revenues to $107 billion, a healthy 3.6-percent rise over the previous year. Last year's net income for the group grew by a more modest 2.4 percent, to $10.3 billion. The average earnings per share was virtually unchanged last year at $2.20. (If we had excluded Unicom Corp. from the survey, earnings per share for 1994 actually would have fallen 3.2-percent below the 1993 average. Unicom, the holding company for Commonwealth Edison Co., took unusually large charges in 1993 to pay for comprehensive rate settlements.)
Last year will be remembered best for the shock waves resulting from California's ambitious retail wheeling proposal and the unexpected dividend