Scottish Power profit up €113 million

Scottish Power has recorded a pre-tax profit of €842 million for the first six months of the year, up €113.1 million from €728.9 million at the same point last year.

Parent company Iberdrola said its UK business has so far performed “in line with expectations” in the first half of 2015 and is making “reasonable returns”, with the increase attributed to improved revenues from its network business and its renewables division.

The high levels of investment in the network business caused an upsurge in base revenues, resulting in a 16 per cent growth in SP Energy Networks’ profit before tax to €564 million year on year.

Scottish Power Renewables profit before tax doubled to €243 million, compared with €123 million in the first half of 2014. This, Iberdrola said, is largely attributable to its first offshore windfarm, West of Duddon Sands, coming online, with installed wind capacity rising to 16.3GW at year end from 14.8GW in 2013.

The combined generation and supply business in the UK saw a modest rise in profit before tax of €34 million to €278 million.

The retail business saw an increase in customer numbers of 18,000 in the first half of the year, as the market has responded well to price cuts in February, and the supplier offered competitive fixed-price tariffs.

The increase came despite the generation arm seeing production fall by 9 per cent due to outages and the carbon tax increasing from £9.55/MWh to £18.08/MWh.

Iberdrola as a whole recorded a profit before tax of €3,795 million, an increase of 5.7 per cent since last year, thanks to the strong performance of its international business which grew by 20 per cent.

Commenting on the results Iberdrola chairman, Ignacio Galán said: “Iberdrola is now beginning a new cycle of growth with investment set to be around €4 billion per year focused on regulated networks and renewables.

“Our strong financial position has enabled Scottish Power to invest more than £2 million every day in the first six months of 2015 to help keep the lights on, cut carbon and keep energy affordable in the UK.”