Investments up sharply over 2 billion euros and targets for 2021 confirmed for Enel despite the economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Italian electric giant closed the first quarter of the current year with revenues equal to 17,1 billion euros, down by 14,4% compared to 19,98 billion in the first quarter of 2020. “The change is mainly attributable to thermoelectric generation and yrading activities in Italy and Spain, due to lower trading, to infrastructures and networks mainly in Latin America due to the negative exchange effect and to end markets, due to the lower quantities of electricity sold in Spain”, explains the company led by Francesco Starace.
THEordinary EBITDA fell 12,3% to 4,159 billion, while the ebitda it stood at 4,091 billion euro (-13,1%). Below the ebit, decreased by 18,8% to 2,525 billion euros due to the performance of “operating management, partially offset by the lower depreciation and amortization recorded in the first quarter of 2021 following the write-downs of certain coal-fired plants carried out during 2019 and 2020 as part of the decarbonization process”.
Down the ordinary net result of the group, settling in the first quarter of 2021 at 1,214 billion (-5,2%), while the Net income marks a drop of 5,7% to 1,176 billion.
The Covid effect could not fail to affect the largest national electricity operator in an economic phase of severe recession and reduction in production activity.
Slightly increasing net financial debt, which rose by 1% to 45,884 billion "mainly due to investments in the period and the negative exchange rate effect, partially offset by the positive cash flows generated by operations". And speaking of investments, in the first quarter of 2021 the increase was 8,8% to 2,035 billion. “The increase is mainly attributable to the growth of investments in Enel Green Power, Infrastructure and Networks and End Markets,” Enel said.
Francesco Starace, CEO of the Enel group, highlighted that "in the first quarter of 2021 we significantly increased our investments, mainly in renewables and networks, in order to further accelerate the decarbonization process group and seize the opportunities that will emerge from the economic recovery. These investments will allow us to accelerate growth, in a context of increasing decarbonisation, projecting us towards a new record for building renewable capacity at the end of the year".
In the light of the results achieved in the first quarter, the managing director has confirmed “the growth objectives for 2021 in terms of ordinary EBITDA and ordinary net income, as announced in November last year at the presentation of the Strategic Plan.” In detail, the guidance envisages ordinary Ebitda between 18,7 and 19,3 billion and ordinary net income between 5,4 and 5,6 billion.
In the morning, speaking at a webinar of the Caltagirone Editore Group, Starace talked about Recovery Plan, calling it "a huge opportunity" and "what the country needs", because it "goes in the direction of digitalisation, of the green revolution and also touches on important parts such as research, health, inclusion, education", online with EU guidelines.
Enel - he underlined - represents "a very important part" of the transition and is "engaged" in three missions. Indeed, they were foreseen investments of 6 billion on renewables, 4 billion on networks and 3 billion on hydrogen. "A major prospective commitment by Enel - he added - which we will see in detail when we receive the response from Europe to the government's proposal".
“We brought initiatives that Cuban approximately 26 billion, within the planning that we have presented, which could generate, if brought to land, an additional impact on GDP of around 86 billion and 100 thousand jobs", said the manager, concluding that "the important thing will be to work and respect the times” that expect to close by 2026.
At Piazza Affari, the Enel share closed the session with a drop of 0,27% to 8,267 euros.
