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Germany's largest importer of Russian gas, had to be bailed out
in a 15 billion euro rescue deal agreed with the government last
month after Moscow drastically cut flows, forcing the company to
buy gas elsewhere at much higher prices.
The bailout has laid bare Germany's reliance on Russian gas
imports, which accounted for around 55% of the total last year,
as well as the costs related to efforts to find alternative
sources to keep on powering Europe's top economy.
"Uniper has, for months, been playing a crucial role in
stabilising Germany's gas supply - at the cost of billions in
losses resulting from the sharp drop in gas deliveries from
Russia," Chief Executive Klaus-Dieter Maubach said.
Underscoring Uniper's commitment to supply customers with agreed
volumes of gas, Maubach warned energy supply in Europe was far
from easing and gas supply in coming winter remains extremely
challenging.
Uniper said it expected a mid to high single digit billion euro
operating loss in 2022 and that next year would mark a
transition year before the group could exit the "loss zone" in
2024.
Apart from equity provided by the state and bigger loans from
state-lender KfW, help will also come via a gas levy that lets
utilities pass on most of the costs from more expensive gas
purchases to customers from October, Uniper said.
It said this would significantly reduce losses from the fourth
quarter onwards.
Uniper shares fell more than 9%.
ALTERNATIVE GAS SUPPLIES
Uniper said more than half of the net loss was due to sharply
lower gas deliveries from Moscow, which has cut flows via the
Nord Stream 1 pipeline to just a fifth, blaming faulty or
delayed equipment. Berlin has said this is a pretext and Maubach
said Uniper agreed with the German government that Russia's
Gazprom could increase supplies via the pipeline if it wanted to
or use alternative routes.
The loss also includes 2.7 billion euros in impairments related
to the cancelled Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which Uniper backed
financially, in addition to goodwills of its Russian business
Unipro.
"The most urgent task for Uniper is to find alternative gas
supplies," Third Bridge analyst Allegra Dawes said, adding it
expected deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG) via a planned
Uniper-led terminal in Wilhelmshaven by the first half of 2023.
As part of the state bailout, Germany will take a 30% stake in
Uniper and has pledged 9 billion euros of credit lines via KfW,
5 billion euros of which have been drawn.
"This will prevent a chain reaction that would do much more
damage. Our top priority now is to swiftly implement the
stabilisation package," Maubach said.
Uniper, which expects the package to be approved at an
extraordinary general meeting in the autumn, said it needed to
wait for a clear signal from the European Commission on how it
thinks about the bailout first.
($1=0.9821 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Additional
reporting by Vera Eckert; Editing by Uttaresh.V, Edmund Blair
and Tomasz Janowski)
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