By Al Root

There's no reason to sell Idacorp, a year-old Barron's stock pick. The utility remains a smart way to participate in the growth of U.S. power demand, while getting some dividend income along the way.

Barron's picked Idacorp stock on May 22, 2025, believing the utility serving some 650,000 retail customers in southern Idaho and eastern Oregon would benefit from population inflow and power-hungry artificial-intelligence data centers.

(Meta Platforms' data center in Kuna, Idaho, which is about 20 miles outside of Boise, is nearing completion.)

Things have gone well. Coming into Friday trading, shares were up 21% since we made the pick. To be sure, the stock's performance trails the S&P 500's return over the same span by about eight percentage points, but is 11 points better than the Vanguard Utilities exchange-traded fund.

"Still like it," says Jay Rhame, CEO of Reaves Asset Management, which manages the Virtus Reaves Utilities ETF. Idacorp is a top-10 position in that fund, as of May 29. It's "still one of the highest-growth companies in the sector," he added.

Idacorp grew earnings per share by 7% in 2025 and is expected to grow earnings closer to 15% in 2026.

Siebert Williams Shank analyst Christopher Ellinghaus recently raised his price target for Idacorp stock to $161 from $158, citing the strong growth outlook this year.

"The company has a slew of electricity resource and transmission investments in the hopper with upside opportunities certain to be announced," he says, adding that Idacorp has some of the fastest customer, load, rate base, and earnings growth in the industry.

Ellinghaus' price target values the company at about 25 times estimated 2026 earnings, and implies stock gains of about 15% from recent levels.

It seems like a reasonable price target given the improving growth. And investors currently collect $3.52 per share in annual dividend payments, for a dividend yield of 2.5%, while Idacorp's story unfolds.

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May 30, 2026 04:00 ET (08:00 GMT)

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