New Uniper management wants to privatize the group again “as quickly as possible”.

Dusseldorf According to the will of the new board of directors, the crisis group Uniper should be privatized again as quickly as possible. At the energy supplier’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, CFO Jutta Dönges said: “Our goal is to return Uniper as an independent company to predominantly private hands as quickly as possible.” Financially, Uniper had already recovered in the run-up to the existential crisis in the previous year.

In 2022, the state took over around 99 percent of the shares in the listed company in order to save it from massive financial burdens. Uniper got into serious trouble when Russia stopped pipeline gas deliveries to Europe in the wake of the Ukraine war and the conflict with the EU. The gas importer was dependent on Russia as the supplier country. Uniper has to buy the missing deliveries on the market in order to be able to continue to supply its own customers.

The ownership structure has to change again in the medium term anyway. The European Union has obliged the federal government to reduce its stake to a maximum of 25 percent plus one share by 2028 at the latest. Dönges said: “We will present our ideas in the next few months.”

Thanks to the fall in gas prices, Uniper is slowly working its way out of its misery. Last year, the company made losses with every kilowatt hour of gas purchased. Because the supplier had to pay higher prices for the purchase than he could ask from municipal utilities and industrial customers. For the past financial year, Uniper therefore posted a loss of around 19 billion euros – a gigantic sum that should cover all previous and foreseeable gas replacement procurement costs.

To cushion this, the federal rescue package included a capital increase of around eight billion euros and so-called authorized capital of up to 25 billion euros. According to Dönges, only 5.5 billion euros of this authorized capital has been used so far.

Sale of dates 4 not started yet

Now, natural gas prices are cheap enough to start making profits again. At the Annual General Meeting, the Chief Financial Officer said: “Uniper does not expect any further financial losses from the replacement procurement of gas volumes due to supply cuts from Russia. We have almost completely hedged the associated delivery obligations to our customers for the years 2023 and 2024 with forward transactions.”

Uniper is back on solid ground. Dönges said: “I can therefore confirm to you today that no further increases in equity by the federal government will be necessary.” At the time of the takeover, the federal government had promised Uniper that it would bring in billions of euros in equity in several tranches. Now Uniper even expects a profit of two billion euros from the gas replacement procurement.

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While the acute financial situation at Uniper has calmed down, it is still unclear how the company should proceed strategically. The business model of reselling cheap Russian natural gas to German customers is passé. Uniper also operates gas storage facilities and coal, gas, hydro and nuclear power plants to generate electricity. Uniper has no interest in selling the German hydropower activities and the Swedish nuclear power activities are an integral part of Uniper’s zero-carbon power supply, Dönges said.

Meanwhile, one condition of the European Commission for the state rescue was the separation from the controversial hard coal-fired power plant Datteln 4. At the general meeting on Wednesday, Dönges said that Uniper had not yet started the sales process.

Allegations of greenwashing against Uniper

However, the company wants to become CO2-neutral in its European electricity business by 2035. According to Dönges, Uniper wants to promote renewable energies and build up a hydrogen business.

Shareholders expressed doubts about these plans at the virtual general meeting. It is true that only less than one percent of Uniper shares are not in state hands. However, groups such as the German Protection Association for Securities Ownership (DSW), the Protection Association of Capital Investors (SdK) and the umbrella organization of critical shareholders continue to hold small shares and confront Uniper with critical questions.

A representative of the SdK asked how Uniper planned to raise the gigantic investments that are necessary for the expansion of renewable energies if the company first had to repay the loans granted to it. A representative of Fridays for Future and a campaign spokeswoman for Greenpeace criticized Uniper’s new fossil projects on behalf of the umbrella organization and accused the company of greenwashing.

For example, Uniper has signed a long-term contract for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) with the Australian natural gas producer Woodside. The activists warned that this does not fit in with the new green orientation that Uniper is promising.

New board members and supervisory boards

It will probably be a few more weeks before Uniper can present more specific details about the new strategy. Since the state takeover, several new board members and supervisory boards have taken up their duties, and they introduced themselves for the first time at the general meeting on Wednesday.

The new chairman of the supervisory board is now ex-Bilfinger boss Tom Blades. In addition, the lawyer and ex-head of the Berlin utility company Gasag, Gerhard Holtmeier, the former Eon CFO Marcus Schenck and the lawyer and co-owner of the law firm Becker Büttner Held, Ines Zenke, are new members of the supervisory board.

Holger Kreetz and Michael Lewis introduced themselves as the new board members. Kreetz has been working for Uniper and the group’s predecessor companies for years and is responsible for Uniper’s operational business. Lewis previously ran the Eon business in the UK. He will become CEO of Uniper and is scheduled to start on June 1st. He was already present at the general meeting.

On August 1, Carsten Poppinga, who previously worked as Senior Vice President for Trading at the energy trading company Statkraft, is also to join the Uniper Management Board as the new Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).

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