Edison International stock plummets as wildfires leave 70,000 Southern Californians without power

Edison International ( EIX ) stock fell nearly 13% Wednesday after the company shut off power to tens of thousands of customers in Southern California as wildfires raged through the region.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 69,601 customers of Southern California Edison — Edison International’s subsidiary serving the region — were affected by outages, according to the company’s tracker. A separate tracker, poweroutage.us , put the total number of outages across the state much higher, estimating that roughly 400,000 Californians were without power.

Southern California Edison data showed that further outages could affect another 42,000 customers.

At least two people were killed as four separate fires spanning thousands of acres tore through Los Angeles County Wednesday. The fires resulted from dry conditions and extreme winds. As of Jan. 1, a third of California was experiencing a drought . Local firefighters said they were not equipped to mitigate blazes of such magnitude, and a constrained water supply hindered their efforts .

Some 80,000 residents across seven counties in Southern California were ordered to evacuate. Meanwhile, about 1,000 structures were destroyed.

One of the major fires in LA's wealthy Pacific Palisades neighborhood could cause an estimated $10 billion in insured losses, according to preliminary estimates from JPMorgan insurance analysts.

Edison International had warned Monday that nearly 300,000 customers were under consideration for public safety power shutoffs (in which utilities turn off power to mitigate the spread of wildfires) as Santa Ana winds brought gusts of up to 100 miles per hour.

While the company said such shutoffs are used "only as a last resort," Edison International also turned off power for customers in November and December as extreme winds heightened wildfire risks.

Those outages briefly sent shares down to a much lesser degree: EIX dropped a modest 1% on Nov. 6 ( the start of the November fire ), before more rallying through the rest of the month, and just over 2% over the course of the early December fires.

Wednesday’s decline in shares brings the stock down 7% from its year-ago level.

Fellow utility stock Pacific Gas and Electric ( PCG ) stock also fell Wednesday, with shares dropping 4.6%.

PG&E last January settled a case from the California Public Utilities Commission’s Safety and Enforcement Division for $45 million for its role in starting a massive 2021 wildfire in northern California.

Prior to its that settlement, the company had also faced over $30 billion in legal claims for its role in past California wildfires, prompting the utility to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019 — dubbed by Harvard researchers as " the first climate change bankruptcy " in a study. PG&E completed its $58 billion bankruptcy reorganization in mid-2020.