By Sergio Goncalves
LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal’s largest utility EDP on Thursday maintained its EBITDA and net profit guidance for 2026 despite cutting its investment plan and reporting a drop in profit for last year.
EDP said earlier on Thursday it planned to slow the pace of capacity expansion, “to focus on maximising returns”, by installing 3.5 gigawatts of new capacity in the next two years compared to 4 gigawatts installed in 2024.
That means an average annual investment of 4.4 billion euros ($4.6 billion) over the next two years compared to 5.4 billion euros invested in 2024. Last May, EDP said it would invest 5.7 billion euros a year on average between 2024 and 2026.
Chief Executive Miguel Stilwell de Andrade said EDP expects to generate net income of between 1.2 billion euros and 1.3 billion euros in 2026, up from 801 million euros in 2024.
Stilwell de Andrade also forecast that EBITDA would rise to between 4.9 billion and 5 billion euros in 2026 from around 4.8 billion euros last year.
EDP’s said its net profit dropped 16% in 2024 to 801 million euros after its renewables unit reported a loss of 556 million euros due to one-off impairments on projects in the United States and Colombia. Analysts in an LSEG poll had forecast profit of 1.23 billion euros for EDP.
EDP Renovaveis shares were down 9% in afternoon trading while EDP’s fell by 3.4%.
EDP announced a share buyback programme worth 100 million euros and proposed a 3% dividend increase to 0.20 euros a share for 2024, representing a 60% payout ratio.
($1 = 0.9569 euros)
(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Charlie Devereux and Susan Fenton)
