GDANSK, March 22 (Reuters) – Poland’s biggest state-owned utility PGE (PGE.WA) posted a 16% year-on-year decline in full-year net profit to 3.33 billion zlotys ($765.92 million) due to a decrease in gross electricity consumption, the company said on Tuesday.
The result was slightly below the company’s estimates of about 3.36 billion zlotys.
Sales revenue rose 39% on the year to 73.44 billion zlotys, with core profit adding up to 8.66 billion zlotys compared with 9.54 billion zlotys in the previous year.
“The year 2022 was exceptionally turbulent for the energy sector, not only in Poland, but also in the world. Despite this, we have achieved many milestones that lead us to the implementation of strategic goals,” company CEO Wojciech Dabrowski said in the statement.
“For the second year in a row, our renewable energy segment also recorded a good result, which generated EBITDA higher by 77% than last year. This is a good harbinger for our green investments, which will soon be the basis of our production,” he added.
In 2022 capital expenditure rose to 7.05 billion zlotys from the last year’s 4.66 billion zlotys, with the utility provider’s attention turning ever-more to renewable energy sources and off-shore wind farms.
PGE said in March last year that it would focus on generation of clean energy and claimed it would reduce greenhouse emission by 80% by 2030.
The utility provider said on Tuesday its management would recommend to skip dividend from 2022’s net profit.
Total net electricity production in 2022 in PGE’s generation units declined 4% on the year to 66.13 TWh. The total production from renewable sources reached 2.2 TWh versus 2.3 TWh year ago.
The volume of distributed electricity amounted to 37.1 TWh. Sales of electricity to final consumers amounted to 34.3 TWh, down by about 9% year-on-year.
($1 = 4.3477 zlotys)
Reporting by Adrianna Ebert and Mateusz Rabiega; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman
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