After billions in losses last year, the energy supplier Uniper is heading towards significant profits again in 2023. The company reported surprisingly high profits for the first three quarters.
More than a year ago, the Uniper company had to be rescued by the state in view of the gas crisis and impending losses running into billions. But Uniper is now clearly in the black again, especially because gas prices have fallen and hedging transactions have become lucrative.
After the previous year 2022 ended with a net loss of 7.4 billion euros as a result of the gas price explosion, it looks like profits in the billions for the current year. According to the balance sheet presented today, Uniper is targeting a net result of between four and five billion euros for the first nine months. The group’s shares rose more than ten percent on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange today.
Protection against delivery problems
In the first nine months, the energy supplier, which supplies hundreds of municipal utilities and industrial companies with natural gas, has already earned a net amount of 3.7 billion euros. The operating result, i.e. before taxes and interest, was even 5.5 billion euros from January to September – after equally large losses in the same period of the previous year.
In addition to a significant easing in current gas prices, the group continues to benefit from hedging transactions for outstanding gas delivery obligations. These forward transactions, which related to the areas of electricity generation from coal and gas power plants as well as the business with the transport and storage (midstream) of gas, now ensured extraordinary income, which caused Uniper’s profits to skyrocket in the first half of the year . “This positive one-off effect continued in the third quarter,” the company said.
Uniper is Germany’s largest gas trader and also operates many power plants in Germany and four other European countries that generate electricity from gas, coal, hydropower, nuclear power and oil. Uniper is also Germany’s largest natural gas storage operator. Uniper does not supply private customers with the exception of district heating.
After Russia stopped gas deliveries last year, Uniper ran into difficulties due to high replacement costs. The German state then put together a billion-dollar stabilization package, of which Uniper used 13.5 billion euros. Since then, the federal government has held a good 99 percent of the shares. By the end of 2028, he must reduce his share to 25 percent plus one share due to requirements of the EU Commission.
New IPO after exit?
Uniper announced last week that it would facilitate this exit through capital measures. To this end, the share capital will be reduced and 20 shares will be merged into one. Uniper also wants to release part of the capital reserves in order to technically eliminate the balance sheet loss.
An extraordinary general meeting, which is scheduled to take place on December 8th, must now decide on the capital reduction. The FDP-led Federal Ministry of Finance had announced that it would present an exit strategy this year. One possibility for this would be an IPO.