FRANKFURT (Reuters) – State-owned utility Uniper swung to an operating loss in the first quarter, it said on Thursday, blaming falling earnings from hedging transactions that reflect lower gas and power prices in Europe.
The German group’s first-quarter adjusted loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation came in at 139 million euros ($158 million), down from a profit of 885 million in the same period last year.
Uniper, which nearly collapsed during Europe’s energy crisis in 2022, also swung to a quarterly adjusted net loss of 143 million euros, it said, compared with a 581 million profit last year.
“Uniper started this year with a significantly weaker first quarter than in 2024,” finance chief Jutta Doenges said, still confirming the utility’s full-year outlook, which assumes adjusted EBITDA of 0.9-1.3 billion euros and adjusted net profit of 250-550 million euros.
The first-quarter losses were partly due to the fact that Uniper hedged its generation at lower prices than in previous years, basically meaning lower prices for the forward sale of power capacity.
Uniper, which will release full first-quarter results on May 6, also had to sell gas volumes from its storage tanks below the sky-high prices it had paid to fill them during the crisis.
Lastly, gas procurement costs to replace Russian gas volumes received in the past also hit profits, said Uniper, which once received most of its natural gas from Gazprom.
($1 = 0.8803 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Gareth Jones)
