By Michael Brooks

Despite posting a decrease in revenue and missing analysts’ predictions, American Electric Power last week reported a 145% increase in fourth-quarter earnings, from $191 million ($0.39/share) in 2014 to $469 million ($0.96/share) in 2015.

The jump in earnings reflected the sale of the company’s barge business, AEP River Operations, for $550 million to American Commercial Lines in October.

The company showed fourth-quarter revenue of $3.6 billion in 2015, less than the $3.8 billion it pulled in the same period last year and the $3.87 billion analysts had expected.

Despite the weak fourth-quarter revenue, it was a good year for AEP, which reported a 25% increase in earnings from 2014 off of only slightly higher revenue.

“Our strong 2015 earnings performance demonstrates that ongoing investment in our core, regulated operations is the right way to deliver enhanced service for our customers and value for our shareholders,” CEO Nick Akins said. “We increased our earnings guidance twice in 2015 and achieved earnings performance solidly within our revised range, despite extremely warm temperatures in the fourth quarter.”

In AEP’s earnings conference call on Thursday, Akins said that “winter, particularly in December, never occurred; it was more like April.” Akins also blamed a weak economy late in the year — as global markets fluctuated and oil prices continued to decline — for the less-than-expected revenue.

The miss, however, has not seemed to faze investors. AEP’s stock price spiked on news of the earnings, opening before the earnings release at $57.13 Thursday and closing out the week at $60.97. Earnings from AEP’s vertically integrated utilities more than doubled in the fourth quarter and increased 26.7% year-over-year, reflecting positive rate cases and lower expenses. The company’s transmission business also contributed to the earnings increase, both in the fourth quarter and for the full year.

Akins was confident that the company’s proposed power purchase agreement in Ohio, which would provide a guaranteed return for its embattled generating stations for eight years, would be approved by regulators, despite a recent call by independent power producers for FERC to void the deal. (See Dynegy, NRG Ask FERC to Void Ohio PPAs.)

Akins cited the settlement AEP reached with Public Utilities Commission of Ohio staff and other stakeholders, including the Sierra Club. “This arrangement, when approved by the Ohio commission, will be a model that can be used nationally that sets the tone for parties with substantially different positions about generation resources and the pace of change to come together, focusing on the clean energy future and the mitigation of transition cost increases that our customers and the public expect,” the CEO said during Thursday’s call.

AEP’s operating earnings per share for 2015 was $3.69, compared to $3.43 in 2014. The company reaffirmed its earnings guidance of $3.60 to $3.80 for 2016.