Innogy 9M Earnings Lower
German utility Innogy reported lower year-on-year nine-month earnings November 13.
Its 350,000km power network is the largest in Germany, while at 7.8mn customers it leads the field among German energy retailers – with 18mn customers across Europe, excluding ones in the UK. Innogy also said it is the fifth largest firm globally in terms of offshore wind generation capacity.
The company is being acquired by E.ON, albeit with its renewable assets kept by RWE, Innogy’s current majority shareholder.
Innogy's net income attributable to shareholders in the first nine months of 2018 was €228mn ($257mn), down 41.4% year-on-year. Adjusted to include a one-off gain from early repayment of loans in 4Q 2017, income was €721mn, down 26.3%. External gas sales in 9M 2018 were 7.4% lower year-on-year at 118.3 terawatt-hours of gas (11bn m3), while power sales were up 3.4% at 169.1 TWh.
Innogy confirmed its outlook for 2018 for earnings and net income, but said at a divisional level that its earnings will be lower than forecast. CFO Bernhard Gunther explained: “Steadily mounting competition continues to pose considerable challenges to our retail business. For this reason and also due to the cold weather effect in the Netherlands in the first quarter, we have had to make a downward adjustment in our outlook for Retail. For the Renewables division, we also expect a lower result due to adverse weather conditions. Particularly low wind levels, especially in 2Q/3Q2018 in the UK and Germany, led to reduced utilisation of existing plants.” The company said last week that the merger of its UK retail business (npower) with that of SSE continues, but SSE said this is now unlikely to be completed by 1Q 2019.