Updates shares in paragraph 5, adds comment from conference call in paragraph 6, Oncor details in paragraph 8

By Pooja Menon

Feb 26 (Reuters) - Energy infrastructure company Sempra SRE.N raised its five-year capital plan by 16% and beat Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter adjusted profit on Thursday, helped by strong performance at its Texas utility.

With tech giants racing to build data centers to support complex AI-related tasks, U.S. utilities are stepping up their capital-expenditure budgets to keep pace with the power demand surge.

Sempra has been concentrating investments in its utilities and modernizing the grid to be more capital efficient.

The company projected capital expenditure of $65 billion for 2026 to 2030, up from its prior plan of $56 billion for 2025 to 2029, to focus on regulated utility investments in Texas and California.

Its shares rose 1.5% to $95.91 in afternoon trading.

Executives on a post-earnings call said the capital allocation is increasingly directed toward Texas, where it expects to drive nearly 60% of its rate base by the end of the decade.

Results were lifted by strong performance at Sempra Texas utility Oncor that continued to expand its grid to meet rising industrial and data center power demand. The unit reported a 48.8% jump in earnings in the fourth quarter.

Oncor raised its five-year capital plan to $47.5 billion for 2026-2030, up from $36 billion for the 2025-2029 period, and has identified about 38 gigawatts of large-load interconnection requests.

"Capital recycling, a clear funding path without common equity issuance under the base plan, and continued dividend growth further support the company's simplified, utility-centric investment profile," said Nicholas Amicucci, analyst at Evercore ISI.

Sempra expects to complete a planned sale of a 45% stake in Sempra Infrastructure Partners to KKR affiliates for $10 billion by the second or third quarter.

It posted an adjusted profit of $1.28 per share for the three months ended December 31, beating analysts' average estimate of $1.17, according to data compiled by LSEG.