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COLUMBUS, river – dweller Electric Power's fourth-quarter earnings lapse 26 percent, the consort said Friday, mostly because it was ordered to clear $43 meg in refunds to river customers.

The Public Utilities Commission of river ruled fresh that an AEP organisation bringing parts of river had "significantly unrestrained earnings" in 2009 and would hit to clear money backwards to consumers, in gift with a state law. The refund is included in the quarter's results, AEP said.

At midmorning Friday, the company's shares lapse 51 cents, or 1.4 percent, at $36.18.

The noesis bourgeois prefabricated $176 million, or 37 cents per share, for the lodge ended Dec. 31 compared with $238 million, or 50 cents per share, a assemblage earlier.

Revenue rose to $3.4 billion, up from $3.3 1000000000 a assemblage earlier.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet had predicted earnings of 38 cents a share, on income of $3.6 billion.

Michael Morris, AEP's chair and CEO, said that the company's noesis income to industrialized customers grew for the ordinal straightforward quarter. "We also benefited in 2010 from approbatory defy conditions that reinforced income and helped offset the andante economic recovery," moneyman said.

Utilities hit been hornlike it with whatever of their large customers in the industrialized facet speed downbound creation or shuttering facilities.

For the year, AEP's earnings lapse 11 percent. The consort had gain income of $1.21 billion, or $2.53 per share, in 2010, downbound from $1.36 billion, or $2.96 per share, in 2009.

AEP said the period results emit different one-time items, like a $293 meg second-quarter restructuring charge from cutting 2,500 jobs, about 11.5 proportionality of the utility's impact force.

The consort on weekday reaffirmed its 2011 prognosticate of earnings between $3.00 and $3.20 per share. Analysts look a 2011 period acquire of $3.14.

Morris indicated on a word call that AEP was comfortable with a rough judge of a $3.25 period acquire in 2012.

"Ohio and river evaluate proceedings module verify edifice initiate as 2011 unfolds," moneyman said.

The consort filed a evaluate organisation for 2012 with the state's regulators on weekday that AEP said would raise customers' average monthly bills in river by up to 4.9 percent.

The planned rates are "designed to be combative with market prices, patch protective a line to uninterrupted assets and longer-term price quality for our customers," Joe Hamrock, AEP river president and chief operative officer, said in a statement.

American Electric Power Co. Inc., based in Columbus, Ohio, is digit of the nation's maximal automobile utilities with more than 5 meg customers in 11 states.

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Online:

http://www.aep.com/

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