EDF boss vows to get company back on track after record $19 billion loss | – #EDF #boss #vows #company #track #record #billion #loss
PARIS, Feb 17 (Reuters) – EDF ( EDF.PA ) chief Luc Remont said in 2022 17.9 billion euro (19 billion dollars) vowed to get the French power maker back on track on Friday after it hit a record net loss. in their reactors like an unprecedented number of interruptions.
Output from the company’s nuclear plants has fallen to a 34-year low, and Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has forced EDF to buy power from the market to supply its customers as power prices across Europe have risen sharply.
Government measures to limit increases in electricity bills for French households and protect them from rising inflation have also hit EDF’s earnings.
The group, which is in the process of full nationalization, has a negative annual core profit or EBITDA of 5 billion recorded a euro, and its net debt rose to 64.5 billion euros from 43 billion euros a year earlier.
“Our priority today is to get EDF back on track,” Chief Executive Luc Remont, appointed by the government in November to turn around the group, told reporters.
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He in 2023 in France said it was targeting nuclear output between 300 and 330 terawatt-hours (TWh), up from 279 TWh last year – the lowest since 1988 and making France a net importer of electricity for the first time since 1980. .
Underlying earnings for this year are expected to be “significantly higher” than the 18 billion euros booked in 2021, Remont said, with the group targeting net debt of 3 times EBITDA or less in 2023.
STRATEGIC PLAN
However, the group needs to finance major investments of €33 billion in its existing reactors by 2028, the president Emmanuel Macron’s plan to build six new reactors by 2050 is expected to cost 52 billion euros.
It also plans to build a multibillion-euro Sizewell C plant in Britain law facing the project.
France government gave Remont six months to develop a strategic plan for the utility, which generates the lion’s share of the country’s electricity and faces delays and cost overruns on existing projects.
Its planned Flamanville reactor is more than a decade behind schedule and its estimated cost has more than quadrupled to €13.2 billion.
EDF said on Friday that 43 of the 56 damaged reactors are now operating after an inspection of delayed maintenance and corrosion problems that first emerged in late 2021.
The most sensitive 10 corrosion problems at the reactor have been resolved or treated, and another seven reactors will have pipes replaced by the end of 2023, it said.
The government’s plan to take full control of the company and delist it from the stock market – it already held an 84% stake – is on appeal from minority shareholders. court the decision is not expected. EDF said that the decision is expected in the first half of 2023.
($1 = 0.9406 euros)
Added by America Hernandez report; Written by Silvia Aloisi; Edited by Ingrid Melander and David Holmes
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2023-02-17 16:56:16
Source – reuters
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