Now that EON and RWE have both been split up, there are four utilities investors can put their money in. Surprisingly perhaps, the conventional generation businesses do better on the German stock exchange than the renewables and grid businesses so far. Gerard Reid, founding partner of Alexa Capital, financial analyst and co-founder of the Energy and Carbon blog, explains why and discusses the prospects of the four companies. Courtesy Energy and Carbon.
The European utility market is going through the biggest upheaval in a generation. It is especially difficult for investors to navigate. Leading utilities such as EON, Engie and RWE have seen their share prices halved over the last five years. In stark contrast, the share prices of Enel, Iberdrola and EDP have doubled. They have done so largely thanks to their focus on renewables as well as the internationalisation of those businesses into growth markets such as North and South America. And each of these utilities were fast to spinoff their renewable businesses.
What this is saying is that investors are more interested in the conventional generation businesses of RWE and Uniper rather than their new renewable, grid and downstream retail businesses
Now we have RWE and EON doing something similar except they have added their grid and retail businesses to the mix. EON keeps renewables, grid and retail with the new spinoff Uniper taking over the conventional generation fleet. RWE did it slightly differently and spun off Innogy which has the renewables, grid and retail businesses in it. So now we have four utilities listed on the German stock exchange for investors to invest in. The question is whether one should invest or not.
Good news
The good news is that each of RWE, EON, Uniper and Innogy have cut costs, restructured, made substantial asset write-downs and cleaned up their balance sheets. This improvement comes at the same time that the outlook for continental European power prices has stabilised.
The current view of investors tells an interesting story. The EON share price is lower than it was one year ago while the price of its spinoff Uniper is up 50% since its listing. In contrast, the RWE share price is up over 50% with Innogy flat since its October listing. What this is saying is that investors are more interested in the conventional generation businesses of RWE and Uniper rather than their new renewable, grid and downstream retail businesses.
With much of the French nuclear fleet out of action over the next few years due to ongoing maintenance and upgrades we are likely to see supply tighten
This has happened for a number of reasons, the first of which is that wholesale power prices have stabilised after 7 years of continuous declines. With much of the French nuclear fleet out of action over the next few years due to ongoing maintenance and upgrades we are likely to see supply tighten. We also likely to see a whole host of old gas and coal closures across the continent not to mention the 20GW of conventional power capacity (including the whole nuclear fleet) in Germany likely to come offline over the next 6 years. To add to that we will see growing demand for electricity thanks to electric cars which is likely to improve the market environment for power generators.
RWE and Uniper should be major beneficiaries of these trends. In contrast, EON and Innogy are facing headwinds in all of their core businesses.
Still small
For a start, the grid businesses of both EON and Innogy are likely to come under pressure in the coming years. In Germany allowed regulated returns will fall from 2019 onwards with a requirement to increase investments in the distribution grid. This will impact the profitability of the whole group noting that over 50% of the earnings of both Innogy and EON come from grid.
And then we have the renewables portfolio of Innogy which totals 3.7GW which is clearly subscale compared to say Enel which has an installed base of 36GW, adding over 2GW of new renewables last year alone. EON has at least a decent renewable portfolio at 5.3GW but let’s be clear this is still small compared to the installed base of 85 GW in Germany.
In such a world, only the big will survive which is why it may make sense to combine the renewable divisions of Innogy and EON
To make matters worse, the highly profitable and fast growth days of European renewables are over due to increased competition for fewer projects and reverse auctions, which are increasing price and margin pressure. All of which is good for the consumer but not the utility. In such a world, only the big will survive which is why it may make sense to combine the renewable divisions of Innogy and EON.
Risky game
The final issue with Innogy and EON is their legacy retail businesses. They may have lots of customers but these businesses will be under pressure for years to come to reduce costs. Further restructuring is inevitable. They need to invest in modern IT systems and most importantly they have to reduce their cost of serving these customers so that they can compete with low cost digital players such as Sonnen who are using low cost IT platforms and digital channels as well as the internet and apps to interact with their clients.
The conclusion has to be that neither EON, RWE, Innogy or Uniper are fit for the future
In contrast, both RWE and Uniper do not have these legacy retail businesses anymore, which frees them up to develop their own energy services business or to make acquisitions. And let’s be clear they will do so as not having customers for your commodity power is a very risky game….
The conclusion has to be that neither EON, RWE, Innogy or Uniper are fit for the future. The good news however is that they do have some stability in their businesses, and there is increasing investor interest, which means that management, can devote themselves to the positioning of those companies and in particular to necessary M&A work.
Editor’s note
Gerard Reid is founding partner of Alexa Capital in London. Her has over two decades’ experience in equity research and fund management in the energy area. He is also a monthly columnist for the German energy industry publication BIZZ energy today and has been lecturer at the university in Berlin for the last decade.
This article was first published on Energy and Carbon, a blog hosted by Gerard Reid and energy journalist and advisor Gerard Wynn. It is republished here with permission.
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Jeffrey Michel says
The hypothesis that RWE is not fit to survive underrates the political and emotional identification of the company with North Rhine-Westphalia. The most recent state election last month strengthened this relationship, with the Free Democrats replacing the Greens as junior partner in the new ruling coalition that is now led by the CDU. With share prices rising, most Rhineland municipalities have postponed plans to divest their RWE holdings. Bankrupting the company might conversely bankrupt the lignite communities responsible for maintaining vital social services and for housing immigrants. At the same time, it is difficult to zone wind turbines in this densely populated state, with 22% of the national population on less than 10% of the available land area.
By recent decision of the German constitutional court, RWE should soon be receiving a sizeable refund of nuclear fuel rod taxes paid since 2011. In its haste to implement a phase-out reversal, the German government had neglected to bring the legislation before the upper house of parliament as legally prescribed. In all, over €6 billion has been awarded to the three energy corporations that have been operating a total of nine (today eight) remaining reactors. The RWE share price rose by several percent as soon as this decision was announced.