Akins talks with Jim Cramer of ‘Mad Money’

Nick Akins, AEP chairman, president and CEO, spoke with Jim Cramer of “Mad Money with Jim Cramer” on CNBC Thursday following AEP’s 2015 year-end and fourth quarter earnings report.

With so many stocks down in 2016, Cramer noted that AEP has rallied 1.6 percent during the new year and has a healthy yield. When AEP reported on Thursday, both sales and earnings came in slightly lower than expected, and yet its stock rose in response to the earnings report, Cramer said.

Nick Akins

Akins spoke with Cramer to provide some perspective.

AEP experienced its warmest quarter weather-wise in 30 years, Akins noted, and “all in all, we raised guidance twice during 2015 and rounded up the year firmly within our guidance range even with the 11-cent bogey that we had relative to weather.”

Akins explained that AEP continues to see growth in oil and gas counties in its service territory, noting that although new drilling has slowed down, there continues to be growth in electrical load due to continued strength in activities such as pipeline capacity building, production optimization and midstream activities.

Responding to a further question about investing in natural gas-related business, Akins said, “We are really focused on being a premium regulated utility — we want to be able to invest in infrastructure and to deploy capital … to the benefit of our customers and continue to optimize the grid.”