Oldenburg, Germany, 27 August 2015. The Oldenburg energy service provider EWE AG has closed out the first half of the year with a good result. Its operating EBIT – the Group’s earnings before interest and taxes, adjusted for special items – is at EUR 337.5 million, around 80 per cent higher than the previous year’s value of EUR 186.3 million. For the first half of the year, the Group’s result for the period is EUR 208.4 million compared to EUR 18.2 million in the very mild first half of 2014. Group sales rose by almost two per cent to approximately EUR 4.2 billion in the first six months of this year.
However, the much better figures in the first half of 2015 must be viewed in the context of the exceptionally mild temperatures experienced in the first half of 2014. EWE’s Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Heiko Sanders explains: “The increase in natural gas sales is primarily attributable to the somewhat colder weather conditions in the first few months of this year – as is the higher volume of gas throughput in the network business.” This changes in no way the need to implement comprehensive changes in the company as part of the programme to boost profitability in order to effectively deal with the fundamental changes taking place in the core markets.
All of the Group’s business areas were able to improve their operating result compared to the first half of 2014. In particular, the Renewables business unit in the Generation business area is generating increasingly positive results. “In the first six months alone, the Riffgat offshore wind farm produced enough electricity for more than 66,000 households,” emphasised Dr. Heiko Sanders.
The number of employees fell by 369 compared to the same period last year. This decrease is primarily due to the fact that EWE sold shareholdings from the IT business unit in the second half of 2014. The company sold the AOV IT Services GmbH and hmmh multimediahaus AG shareholdings.
The PDF version of this news release also provides you with a table of key indicators.
