E.ON to Float 53% of Uniper

E.ON said April 26 it intends to list about 53% of shares in its power generation, gas and oil spinoff company, Uniper, on the stock market later this year. A final decision on spinning off Uniper must be taken by a meeting of E.ON shareholders on June 8.

The objective is that E.ON itself becomes “a leading company of the distributed, renewable and digital energy world”, the company told a Capital Markets Day in London, noting that its outlook for 2016 is earnings before interest and taxes (Ebit) of €2.7bn to €3.1bn and underlying net income of €0.6bn-€1bn. E.ON's first quarter results will be issued on May 11.

On April 25, Uniper named former GDF Suez deputy chief Jean-Francois Cirelli and the current finance chief of Austria’s OMV, David Davies, as two of its four shareholder representatives to sit on its new supervisory board.

Uniper CEO Klaus Schafer said: “This business is founded on the capabilities of our employees and a balanced portfolio of assets—from power stations, storage facilities, and pipelines to state-of-the-art trading systems—that ensure a secure flow of energy.”

Uniper released pro forma figures for its business performance for the last years while part of E.ON. In 2015 Uniper’s three segments—European generation, global commodities (including gas and LNG), and international power —recorded adjusted EBIT of €0.8 billion (2014: €0.8 billion).

Although North Sea upstream assets have now been divested by E.ON, the spinoff firm Uniper will replace E.ON as the partner of Gazprom and Wintershall in the Yuzhno Russkoye development in Western Siberia, one of the world’s few remaining giant natural gas fields. Uniper will also take over Russian power plants that belong to E.ON, just as it will E.ON's conventional power plants in Germany, the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Mark Smedley