The French energy giant Engie has had a successful year in 2023 with a recurring net profit in line with expectations, up 3.8%, despite a 12% drop in its turnover, and announced on Thursday that it was raising its forecasts for 2024. This producer and supplier of electricity and gas, of which the French State holds nearly 24%, generated 82.6 billion euros in turnover in 2023, down 12% compared to the previous year, mainly due to the lull in gas and electricity prices.
This is less than what the consensus of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg and Factset predicted, who bet on a turnover of 95.4 billion euros. But investors didn’t hold it against him: around 9:15 a.m., Engie’s shares gained 2.28% to 14.86 euros on the Paris Stock Exchange. The recurring net profit, data favored by the group excluding exceptional events, stood at 5.4 billion euros (3.8%), in line with the consensus of the analysts surveyed and the group’s forecasts, raised twice in 2023.
The net result was multiplied more than tenfold, jumping to 2.2 billion euros in 2023 after a year 2022 which saw it almost reduced to nothing (200 million euros) due to heavy expenses. Catherine MacGregor, general manager of the group, praised journalists for “very good results for 2023”, “which illustrate the solidity of our operational and financial performance”.
The year 2023 for Engie was marked by a historic agreement in Belgium providing for the shutdown of several nuclear power plants by 2025 operated by its subsidiary Electrabel, in parallel with the ten-year extension of two reactors, Doel 4 and Tihange 3. The group noted for its 2026 forecasts “a drop in nuclear results in Belgium with the shutdown of several power plants by 2025”, this agreement “allows us to considerably reduce the level of risk for the group”, underlined Catherine MacGregor.
In the long term, the group wants to focus on renewables, while advocating, like TotalEnergies, the maintenance of gas as a transition energy. “Our results are very solid in 2023 with growth of 18% in Ebit (operating result, Editor’s note) excluding nuclear”, at 9.5 billion euros, underlined Pierre-François Riolacci, deputy general director of finance, with journalists.
This growth in non-nuclear profitability “is mainly driven by two activities,” he explains. “The first is renewables”, whose progression is supported by “the contribution of newly implemented capacities, as well as the increase in prices that we have captured”. In detail, Engie increased its renewable energy capacities by 3.9 GW in 2023, with commissioning in North America, Europe and Latin America, bringing its total capacity to 41.4 GW.
The growth in non-nuclear profitability is also driven by its GEMS (Global Energy Management) division.
“We have refocused, we have strengthened our performance (…) We will now continue this path to make Engie in 2026 a group which is even stronger (…) and which will fully seize the many opportunities of the energy transition,” said its general director. In the shorter term, the group announces that it is revising “upwards its recurring net profit objective” for 2024, “despite the drop in market prices over the last few quarters and taking into account the growth” of its electricity supply activities. energy to businesses and large consumers.
The former GDF Suez is now targeting a recurring net profit of between 4.2 and 4.8 billion euros, compared to 3.8 to 4.4 billion euros previously announced. “It is lower than 2023 since the market conditions are different, but it is much higher than 2021, the best year of comparison in terms of market conditions,” Catherine MacGregor told journalists. The group is offering its investors a dividend of 1.43 euros per share, stable compared to the previous year.
