May 2 (Reuters) - Electric and gas utility Southern Co ( SO )

said on Thursday industrial sales have started to show

signs of recovery following a soft 2023, after customer growth

and higher electricity usage drove a first-quarter profit beat.

Retail electricity saw robust customer growth, the company

said. It added more than 13,000 residential electric customers

and over 7,000 residential gas customers.

"All our businesses experienced a strong start to 2024 ...

this performance was driven by a variety of factors, including

investments in our state regulated utilities, weather that was

less mild than the first quarter of last year and higher

weather-adjusted sales in our electric utilities' commercial

customer class," said CEO Christopher Womack.

Southern's total retail sales, which include residential,

commercial and industrial, were up 5.6% at 35.25 billion KWh for

the quarter.

Strong commercial sales growth was also driven by increased

customer usage and 12% rise in data center sales in the quarter.

Utilities are poised to benefit from a boom in electricity

demand driven by data centers used for powering technologies

such as generative AI, which led to revisions in capital

expenditure plans and demand forecasts for many utilities at the

start of the year.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based company posted adjusted profit of

$1.03 per share in the quarter, compared with analysts' average

estimate of 90 cents per share, according to LSEG data.

Southern Co ( SO ), which serves 9 million customers across the

Southeast, reaffirmed its full-year adjusted profit forecast in

the range of $3.95 to $4.05 per share.