Trustpower shares dipped after the power company cut its earnings outlook with a dry and still start to the year weighing on the firm’s generation.
The company said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and fair value adjustments will be between $205 million and $220m in the 12 months ending March 31, a small increase from the $200.2m it reported in the 2021 financial year, but down from its previous forecast of $210m to $225m.
The updated guidance excludes the $9m cost of selling its retail arm to Mercury NZ for $441m, which is expected to settle in the June quarter once the Tauranga Energy Consumer Trust restructuring is complete.
Trustpower, which will rebrand to Manawa Energy once it’s a standalone generation business, said the downgraded earnings outlook was due to unsettled weather including a very dry January, with low wind volumes and hydro inflows coinciding with high wholesale electricity prices.
The need for work on its Waipori scheme extended an outage by about four weeks and also contributed to the downgrade.
Trustpower shares declined 1% to $6.94 in early trading on the NZX.
