PPC returned to losses in 2021 as in the second half of last year it chose to support its customers with discounts and other benefits totaling 800 million euros, sacrificing its net profitability.
And according to what the president and CEO of the company George Stassis said both during the announcement of the annual financial results and to the analysts, PPC will continue to support its customers this year against the large increases in energy prices, while at the same time it will continue its investment plan for the green transition of the group keeping for this purpose the EBITDA at the same levels as this year.
The “skyrocketing” profits…
The processing of the annual financial results also shows that the noise raised by SYRIZA and its president Alexis Tsipras regarding the super profits made by the electricity companies during the energy crisis was “much ado about nothing”. .
About 10 days ago, during a debate in Parliament, Mr. Tsipras had harshly attacked the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for not proceeding with the taxation of the super profits of the energy companies. In fact, the president of SYRIZA, citing data, had said that during the energy crisis, the super profits of energy companies amounted to 1.4 billion euros with 1 billion euros of this being the PPC’s windfall.
The Prime Minister, responding to Mr. Tsipras, announced an investigation by energy administrator RAE and if they find super profits, then he will tax them with 90%.
From the data announced by the PPC, it appears that the recurring EBITDA in the field of electricity generation was in 2021 in relation to 2020 higher by 788 million euros. But in the marketing sector for the same period it was negative by 778 million. This fact, as noted by market participants, shows that PPC has indeed returned to consumers the profits it made from the high prices of electricity generation. The only “super profits” it had were of the order of 10 million euros…
The same sources also note that if PPC, which is the largest player in the market, had only these super profits… then the skyrocketing profits are a myth…
