Understand any stock in simple English
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IDACORP, Inc.
IDACORP is a utility company that generates and delivers electricity to homes and businesses in southern Idaho and eastern Oregon.
IDACORP is an electric utility. Through its main subsidiary, Idaho Power, it makes electricity at its own power plants, moves that electricity across high-voltage lines, and then delivers it to roughly 670,000 homes, farms, and businesses in southern Idaho and a slice of eastern Oregon. Most people in its service area don't choose their power company — it's the one wired into their neighborhood, which is why its customer count has grown steadily as cities like Boise have expanded.
What makes this utility unusual is how much of its own power it produces. Idaho Power owns and runs hydroelectric dams on the Snake River, and those dams supply a large share of the electricity its customers use. Water is cheap and renewable, so the company's fuel costs tend to run lower than utilities that burn coal or natural gas. It also owns natural gas plants and buys power from solar farms and wind projects to fill the gaps when rivers run low.
The business earns money the way utilities generally do: state regulators approve the rates it can charge customers and the profit it's allowed to make, and the company then earns that return by investing in its grid — new power lines, substations, and upgrades to handle a fast-growing region. Higher customer demand means more infrastructure spending, which in turn supports bigger earnings. The catch is that growth requires a lot of capital, and regulators, not the market, decide how much profit is fair. Wildfires and drought are real risks for a utility in the dry West, and its dividend — a steady quarterly check funded by that regulated profit — is a big part of why investors own the stock.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026