Excellent results confirm earnings strength of EnBW
Record figures; pre-tax earnings up by 57.9%/operating cash flow by108%/free cash flow by 47.7%/sales growth of 17%
Karlsruhe. EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG finished the first quarter of financial 2005 with record earnings, as reflected by the quarterly report published on May 11, 2005. The figures show that earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 26 percent to 711.7 million euros during the first three months of 2005, while earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) were up by 36.1 percent to 537.5 million euros and earnings before taxes (EBT) increased by 57.9 percent compared to the already healthy earnings in the same period last year. Earnings after taxes increased by 76.6 percent to a figure of 332.8 million euros. EnBW already published the key preliminary figures for the first quarter of 2005 on the occasion of its AGM on April 29, 2005.
Group net income from continuing operations increased by a massive 83 percent compared to the same period last year; this means that the Q1 2005 figure is equal to 86 percent of net income for the whole of 2004. The EBITDA margin of 25.2 percent for the first quarter of 2005 is already above the longer-term target corridor of 23–25 percent. All the main core companies performed above target on the operating front in Q1 2005.
EnBW also succeeded in growing both sales revenues and sales volume, recording external sales of 2.8 billion euros for the period from January to March 2005. This is equivalent to an increase of 17 compared to the first quarter last year. The electricity business area posted sales revenues of 2 billion euros, with figures of 709.5 million euros for the gas business area and 112.3 million euros for energy and environmental services. Electricity volume supplied rose by 4.8 percent to 26.3 billion kilowatt hours, while gas sales were up by 18.1 percent to 34 billion kilowatt hours.