The energy company has come through the crisis well so far.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf Germany’s largest energy supplier Eon achieved an adjusted profit (Ebitda) of almost 6.1 billion euros in the first nine months of the year, as the group announced on Wednesday. This puts the Essen-based company around 170 million euros below the previous year’s figure. At that time, however, Eon was also able to record a special effect through the reimbursement as part of the nuclear phase-out.
However, the increased procurement costs for electricity and gas are not purely profitable for the energy company. Although Eon has more than doubled sales in the customer solutions division in the past few months to over 63 billion euros, with an Ebitda of 1.4 billion there are just almost 100 million euros more than in the same period last year.
In addition, Eon had to write off a total of more than one billion euros on its stake in the leaky Nord Stream 1 Baltic gas pipeline. The 15.5 percent deposited in a pension fund are now still on the books with 100 million euros. The cause is the damage to both strands of the tube since September 26 for reasons that have not yet been clarified. Eon had already reduced the value to 500 million euros from the previous 1.2 billion euros after the first half of the year.
Eon has high procurement costs due to price increases
“Thanks to operational efforts, the burdens from the energy crisis were largely offset. Our core business is therefore continuing to develop according to plan. We confirm our forecast for the group for the 2022 financial year,” emphasized Eon CFO Marc Spieker on Wednesday. The group still expects an adjusted Ebitda in the range of 7.6 to 7.8 billion euros after 7.9 billion last time.
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Eon supplies around 14 million private and business customers in Germany, including 1.5 million gas customers. Unlike for RWE, the high raw material prices are not only positive for Eon. Although the supplier continues to receive electricity and gas on contractually agreed terms, it procures part of its energy on the exchange at current prices. Because tens of thousands of discounter customers came to Eon after being kicked out of providers like Stromio at the end of 2021, Eon has high procurement costs in some cases.
After all, the price of electricity on the exchange has jumped from 80 euros per megawatt hour to 600 euros in the meantime within the past nine months. The price per megawatt hour is currently around 126 euros in daily trading. However, Eon was only able to pass on the additional costs to its customers bit by bit over the course of the year.
In return, the energy supplier has raised the prices considerably. As of August 1st, the prices for Eon customers had risen by an average of 40 percent in the past few months.
It was only on Tuesday evening that the supplier Rheinenergie, for example, announced another steep price increase: From January, the electricity prices in the basic supply tariff will rise by a whopping 23.94 cents to 54.98 cents per kilowatt hour, the Cologne-based company announced, in which Eon has a stake of more than 20 percent holds shares. Other municipal utilities such as Munich, Leipzig and Nuremberg are also increasing their prices by more than half in the coming weeks.
Energy suppliers worry about payments from the federal government
From next year, the federal government is likely to pay most of the price increases. The electricity and gas price brake is intended to relieve consumers of the high energy costs. According to current plans, Eon would then be reimbursed for the difference between the price set by the state and the purchase price.
The gas price brake is to come into force from March. As early as December, however, the state wants to take over the down payments from consumers once. In return, the suppliers should waive their customers’ payments that they receive from the federal government instead.
Eon, Entega and Enercity are now apparently worried that this money will not be in their accounts in time for December 1st. The three gas suppliers have apparently written a letter to the government and are demanding changes to the bill, according to information from the news portal “The Pioneer”. Because there is no guarantee that the suppliers will receive the money from the federal government in good time, there could be liquidity bottlenecks.
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