French Engie 2019 Income 'on Track'

French Engie confirmed November 7 its earnings guidance for the full year as it announced nine-monthly results that were higher year on year. It still expects a net recurring income group share between €2.5bn ($2.8bn) and €2.7bn for the year.

Its current operating income (COI) was €3.8bn, up 9% and pre-tax earnings (Ebida) of €7.1bn were up 5%. The percentages were higher when taking into account currency, acquisition/disposal and other effects.

Network operations in France suffered from the effects of the merger of the north and south zones; and higher than expected congestion costs. To a lesser extent, storage profits were impacted by customer penalties owing to technical issues in France and negative price effects in Germany, it said. Networks benefited from the first contribution of TAG in Brazil, acquired earlier this year. Networks though are the biggest part of its business, accounting for €1.6bn, and COI was down 8% year on year.

Supply activities continued to be impacted by a difficult market context, mainly from margin contractions in French retail. The COI there was down 33%.

The disposal of Glow in southeast Asia marked its exit from coal, but also damaged its revenues from power. But it reported improved performance elsewhere, including greater output from a gas-fired plant in Australia and power purchase agreement in Latin America. So its COI from thermal was up 4%.

Its nuclear business was driven by higher availability of Belgian production units and achieved price improvement but while the COI was up 56% it still made a heavy loss. 

CEO Isabelle Kocher said the results "confirm Engie's ability to grow following the profound transformation undergone over the last three years." It has developed and commissioned more wind and solar capacity as part of its drive to boost the zero-carbon transition of its clients, it said. It added 1.8 GW of wind and solar over the first nine months and now it has 8.8 GW secured out of the target of 9 GW to be installed by 2021.