innogy: UK retail business and low wind levels have impact on 2018 Group result

Fiscal 2018 was an eventful year for innogy SE: in March, the planned takeover by E.ON/RWE was announced, the joint preparation of which is now in progress, within the boundaries set by anti-trust law. In its Renewables division, innogy successfully implemented its growth strategy and expanded its activities to include new markets and projects. However, positive developments were overshadowed by unusually low wind levels across large areas of Europe, which had a negative impact on the result. Earnings developed positively in the company’s grid business, due to one-off effects from the accounting measurement of items, among other things. In Retail, negotiations to merge the UK retail business of npower with the British retail activities of SSE plc were stopped at the end of the year with no result. For this reason, innogy had to again include its UK retail activities with their negative earnings contribution in the adjusted Group result. This made it necessary to adjust the outlook for 2018, even though performance at Group level had been in line overall with the expectations up until then.

innogy closed fiscal 2018 in line with the adjusted outlook issued in December 2018:
adjusted EBIT reached EUR 2,630 million, and was thus down about 7 per cent year on year. Adjusted net income fell to EUR 1,026 million. On this basis, the Executive Board and Supervisory Board of innogy SE will propose to the Annual General Meeting on 30 April 2019 a dividend pay-out of EUR 1.40 per share. This means that the pay-out ratio will be in the middle of the targeted range of 70 to 80 per cent of adjusted net income. For details on business performance, please refer to the 2018 Annual Report, available at www.innogy.com/annual-report-2018.