Hidroelectrica, which currently has the biggest share of Romanian production of energy thanks to a steady flow, plans to make a gross profit of 733.8 million lei (around EUR170 million) in 2015 amid revenues of almost RON3 billion.
By that point in the future Hidroelectrica will end up operating at a gross margin of around 25%, a level considered normal for a producer of hydro power, but never reached by the Romanian company because the company was involved in unfavorable contracts, which led to its current insolvency.
The result predicted for 2015 is much better than the preliminary one for 2012. The company is expected to have recorded a loss of almost RON163 million (EUR36 million) in 2012. This year Hidroelectrica is set to post a profit of around RON433 million (almost EUR100 million), as announced by the company’s judicial administrator Euro Insol.
The rise of Hidroelectrica’s results in the medium term should be coupled with a reduction in the number of employees, from 4,900 people, as forecast for the end of this year, to 4,500 employees by 2015.
The 2015 level of spending is also expected to be similar to this year’s. 2013 spending is set to be 16% lower than in 2012.
60 times higher profit in 2015
Nuclearelectrica, a company which through its two nuclear reactors at Cernavoda (SE Romania) covers around 20% of Romania’s energy needs, has in turn budgeted significantly higher results.
One of the factors that will significantly boost the company’s revenues is the fact that increasingly more of the energy produced will be traded on the free market.
Up until last year around 70% of the energy produced by Nucleaereletrica went into the regulated energy basket that supplies households and small companies because nuclear energy is cheap.
Now the percentage has declined to 50% and will continue to decline as the market is deregulated.
So, while preliminary data shows that Nuclearelectrica last year had a gross profit of just RON6.6 million at a turnover of over RON2 billion, for this year the energy producer expects to see a gross profit of RON157 million, almost 24 times higher than last year. In 2015 the energy producer believes it will reach a gross profit of over RON400 million amid a turnover of around RON2.5 billion, almost 30% higher than last year. The number of employees is not expected to fluctuate significantly between 2013 and 2015, but stay at around 2,150 people.
In the case of Energy Complex Oltenia, a company with over 18,800 employees after thermal power stations Turceni, Rovinari and Craiova and mines of SNLO were brought together, no budget estimates have been published for 2014-2015, just for this year.
The company should post a turnover of around RON6.2 billion (EUR1.4 billion) and a rather low gross profit of just RON180 million in 2013, 12% higher than last year.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)