May 7 (Reuters) - U.S. power and gas utility Sempra ( SRE )

posted a 17% drop in its first-quarter profit on

Tuesday, impacted by lower earnings at two of its units.

Sempra ( SRE ), which caters to nearly 40 million customers in areas

including California, Texas and Mexico, said revenue from its

natural gas utilities more than halved to $2.11 billion from the

year earlier.

Profit at the company's California unit dropped 5.8%, while

its electric sales fell to 935 million kilowatt hours (kWh) from

1.6 billion kWh a year ago.

Sempra Infrastructure, the company's unit that develops,

invests and operates clean energy infrastructure, reported a 58%

fall in its quarterly earnings.

But the Texas unit posted a more than twofold jump in its

profit during the quarter.

The company said Sempra Texas "continues to see broad

economic expansion across its service territory with notable

growth in residential, commercial and industrial development,

including development of digital infrastructure such as data

centers and microchip and semiconductor manufacturing

facilities".

Utilities are expecting to benefit from a boom in

electricity demand driven by data centers used for powering

technologies such as generative AI, which has led to revisions

in capital expenditure plans and demand forecasts for many

utilities at the start of the year.

Sempra's ( SRE ) net income fell to $801 million, or $1.26 per

share, for the quarter ended March 31, from $969 million, or

$1.53 per share, a year earlier.

Its total revenue came in at $3.64 billion, down from $6.56

billion last year.

The San Diego, California-based company expects its

full-year 2024 profit per share to be between $4.52 and $4.82.

It posted a profit of $4.79 per share in 2023.