The Utilities Analyst Who Says the Data Center Demand Story Doesn't Add Up
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Utilities analysts are having a moment as the energy sector gets a boost from AI. With an extra 94 gigawatts forecast to be needed by 2030 to power all these new data centers, energy investment has become a hot play as investors take a "picks and shovels" approach. But one long-time analyst says that — from a utilities perspective — we're already set to overbuild capacity by twice as much as is needed. On this episode, Andy DeVries, co-head of investment grade credit and head of utilities and power at CreditSights, talks to us about the math behind his infrastructure overbuild analysis, who has been making money (so far) from the data center boom, and what we already see playing out in the credit markets.
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| 0:34.4 | Music Podcasts Radio News Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. |
| 0:35.8 | And I'm Joe Wisenthall. |
| 0:39.9 | Joe, imagine you are a utilities analyst. |
| 0:40.8 | Yeah, fun. |
| 0:44.9 | And for years, you are laboring in the utility analysis minds. |
| 0:47.8 | And, you know, we like talking about utilities. |
| 0:48.9 | We like talking about energy. |
| 0:51.1 | We find pretty much anything interesting. |
| 0:51.6 | That's right. |
| 0:56.2 | Equal opportunity interest people, we are. But you you got to say utilities for a while, some people would say it was a little boring. No, that's right. I mean, |
| 1:01.1 | for most of our careers, I think if you were utilities analyst, a really big part of your job, |
| 1:08.8 | and maybe I'm wrong, but I just in the popular discourse was like talking |
| 1:12.8 | about yield relative to treasuries, right? They were seeing as sort of bond-like instruments, |
| 1:17.7 | etc. Maybe a little bit of growth, but roughly balanced. Reliable, safe haven-ish dividend plays, |
| 1:24.0 | I guess. Totally. And since I know where we're going with this conversation, one of the themes of the last few years has been what I would say is the old industries |
| 1:34.7 | that were either stable or cyclical becoming secular in the way they grow. |
| 1:39.1 | I think that's right. So what is happening now is if you were, I don't want to say a lowly utilities analyst, but, you know, maybe a sort of forgotten utilities analyst outside of your sector, suddenly you are very in demand, right? Because all you hear about nowadays is the AI build out and energy constraints on that. And so obviously a lot of people want to look at it from a utilities perspective. |
| 2:02.8 | Totally. |
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