Eight Power Companies Apply for Transmission Fee Hikes, Likely to Affect Electricity Bills from November

The top five US hyperscalers are projecting a combined capital expenditure of $660 billion to $725 billion for 2026, nearly double their 2025 outlays, as the AI build-out shifts from software to physical infrastructure. Microsoft is guiding for roughly $175 billion in adjusted capital expenditure for both FY2026 and FY2027, with two-thirds of quarterly spend going to short-lived assets like CPUs and GPUs and the rest to long-lived data center infrastructure, and it added 1 gigawatt of capacity in Q3 FY2026, doubling its global footprint in two years. Amazon AWS has raised its 2026 capex guidance to approximately $220 billion, with CEO Andy Jassy saying AI capacity is expected to remain constrained through 2027 and contracted demand extending into 2028. Meta saw profit drop 14% in Q2 2026 despite a 28% revenue increase as its build-out, including a 1 gigawatt data center in Ohio and a Louisiana facility that could scale to 5 gigawatts, compressed margins, while Alphabet raised its 2026 capex guidance to as much as $205 billion and its Google Cloud backlog more than doubled year-over-year to $240 billion. The Stargate joint venture involving Oracle, OpenAI and others targets up to $500 billion in infrastructure investment by 2029, and Oracle's FY2026 capex reached $55.7 billion, more than doubling from the previous year.

Valmont Industries has raised its 2026 sales and earnings guidance, a move that comes after an 18.6% six-month share rally tied to utility demand and grid modernization. The stock is up 15.3% year to date and has delivered a 1-year total shareholder return of 27.4%, while its 3-year and 5-year total shareholder returns of just over 2x reflect the payoff from the grid modernization theme. Against a last close of $474.64, the most followed valuation narrative pins fair value at about $624.50, implying the shares are 24% undervalued. Valmont's investments in capacity, automation, and AI are expected to unlock between $350 and $400 million in incremental annual revenue and support higher earnings and margins as the multi-year cycle unfolds. The bullish case leans heavily on infrastructure and agriculture cycles, so weaker project spending or sustained material cost pressure could quickly challenge that 24% discount story.