5th Apr 2019 08:39
LONDON (Alliance News) - ContourGlobal PLC on Friday declared a dividend above company guidance as it reported a surge in annual revenue.
The FTSE 250-listed electricity plant operator separately said it has appointed Stefan Schellinger as chief financial officer with effect from April 15. Schellinger's most recent role was at plastic products supplier Essentra PLC, where he spent five years from 2013 to 2018, with the last three years as finance director.
The company also appointed Mariana Gheorghe as non-executive director with effect on June 30. Gheorghe most recently was chief executive officer of Romanian oil and gas company OMV Petrom SA for 12 years from 2006 to 2018.
For 2018, the group reported a pretax profit of USD27.8 million, down from USD40.6 million the year before, due to higher depreciation and amortisation costs as well as finance expenses.
Income from operations dipped by 2.6% to USD262 million from USD269 million mainly from a low wind resource from ContourGlobal's wind farms in Brazil and Austria in the year.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation however increased by 19% to USD610 million from USD513 million in 2017, due to growth on acquisitions of CSP Spain and CHP Mexico and gains from the sale of minority solar assets in Italy and Slovakia.
Annual revenue grew by 23% to USD1.25 billion from USD1.02 billion the prior year.
ContourGlobal declared a final dividend of 9.4 cents per share, leading to a total payout of 13.4 cents, or USD90 million in total. The total dividend is above the group's initial guidance of USD80 million.
Operationally, Thermal Energy produced 7,321 gigawatts per hour, down 15% from 8,594 GWh the year before, while the availability factor dipped to 90.2% from 92.6%.
Renewable Energy however saw growth in production by 9.9% to 4,893 GWh from 4,454 GWh, but the availability factor edged down to 96.8% from 97.6%.
Looking ahead, ContourGlobal has guided adjusted Ebitda for 2019 to be in the range of USD720 million to USD770 million, and dividends to increase by 10% per year.
"We succeeded in delivering a good set of results in 2018, our first full year since our initial public offering. We delivered on our operational, financial and growth commitments, including another record-setting health and safety performance," said Chief Executive Joseph Brandt.
"We continue to make progress on our target to double run-rate 2017 adjusted Ebitda by 2022 through profitable, selective growth and high-performance operations," Brandt added.
Shares in ContourGlobal were up 4.7% at 191 pence each on Friday morning.
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