Fortum will report 1Q25 results pre-market on Tuesday 29 April. Ahead of the release we spoke to the company; we highlight that there has been no change to guidance.
On numbers, we expect:
- In Generation, substantially lower EBIT YoY owing to lower achieved power prices vs. 1Q24 as well as slightly lower nuclear output due to outages, and the impact of the Swedish property tax.
- In Consumer Solutions, a repeat of the strong performance from 1Q24, as the division continues to recover from negative customer behaviour in previous years.
If our 1Q estimates prove correct, it would constitute 36% of FY25 consensus adj. net income. In comparison, in 1Q24 Fortum made 48% of its final FY24 adj. net income, and equivalent ratios were 42% for 1Q23/FY23 and 21% for 1Q22/FY22.
NB that the stock will go ex-dividend EUR1.4 on 2nd April, comprising the EUR0.9/sh regular annual dividend and the EUR0.5/sh special dividend announced at FY results.
On the conference call, we expect key topics to be:
- Data centre power demand and PPA outlook, especially in light of a recent withdrawal of electricity tax breaks for data centre operators in Finland (see report) - we understand from Fortum that this could increase data centre operator power costs by 2.2ct/KWh i.e. EUR22/MWh - more than a 50% increase.
- Hedging captured price and incremental volume hedged.
- Commentary and current trends on optimisation premiums.
