EDF has reported a sharp drop in UK earnings last year as it lost 200,000 customers to rivals amid a “highly competitive” market.
The French energy firm said earnings for its UK business tumbled 16.5% to £691 million in the year to December 31, as it blamed a downturn in nuclear power generation and “lower realised net prices”.
Sales came in at 8.97 billion euro (£7.9 billion), a rise of 3.9%.
The fall in earnings comes despite the firm announcing two substantial price hikes last year, and energy customers on EDF’s standard variable tariff face a 10% price increase from April 1.
It follows an announcement by Ofgem that there will be an increase to the energy price cap.
EDF Energy had three million residential electricity accounts and 1.9 million gas customers at the end of last year, a decrease of around 200,000.
“The supply activities benefited from increases in residential tariffs, although the residential customer portfolio showed a year-on-year decrease of -4.2% in a highly competitive environment,” EDF said.
EDF said that “all key milestones” were reached at Hinkley Point C, the power station it is helping construct that will supply the UK with electricity to meet 7% of the country’s needs from the end of 2025.
For the group as a whole, EDF reported an 11.1% rise in earnings to 15.3 billion euro (£13.5 billion) while sales jumped 6.3% to 68.9 billion euro (£60.6 billion).
Net income plummeted 63% to 1.2 billion euro (£1 billion).
Jean-Bernard Levy, EDF’s chairman and CEO, said: “The rebound in our results in 2018 has occurred and is in line with our forecasts. We have achieved all our financial objectives and are exceeding all the targets of our performance plan.
“We have stabilised our net financial debt, strengthened our balance sheet, reached a record for generation in renewable energies, succeeded in overhauling the French nuclear sector and strengthened our supply business through several significant innovations.”
