Meridian Energy's full year net profit dropped 86 percent - reflecting sale a year earlier of its business and non-cash movements in financial hedging. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Meridian Energy says its full year result reflects increased customer sales, higher generation volumes and positive wholesale trading.
Key numbers for the year ended June compared with a year ago:
- Net profit $95m vs *$664m
- Underlying profit $315m vs $233m
- Revenue $3.22b vs $3.7b
- Full year dividend 17.9 cents per share vs 17.4 cps
- *Meridian Energy's full year net profit dropped 86 percent, reflecting the year earlier sale of Meridian's Australian business and non-cash movements in financial hedging.
Chief executive Neil Barclay said total sales volumes rose 2.6 percent, with an increasing focus on working with customers to support their decarbonisation opportunities.
Revenue fell 15 percent with retail electricity pricing continuing to fall in real terms.
"We've continued to focus on playing a key role in helping Aotearoa New Zealand to decarbonise by driving forward with our renewable developments and offering customers an enhanced range of clean energy solutions," Barclay said.
"An initial trial provided support for 250 households, and we found that by being a conduit into social support agencies and by applying our own capabilities we were able to help these customers with energy affordability challenges."
The company also launched a $5m Energy Wellbeing Fund to support families in energy hardship with the aim of reaching 5000 households over the next two years ending 2024.
Meridian doubled its pipeline of potential projects to 4.7 gigawatt hours (GW), with 1.5GW of capacity secured and 3.2GW in advanced prospects.
"For Meridian to do our share of the heavy lifting, we'll need to build the equivalent of 20 large wind farms by 2050," he said.