KEY POINTS:
State owned power company Mighty River Power has announced a $111 million profit for 2007/08 financial year.
The result is up on last year's $96.9m, and chairwoman Carole Durbin said that while the company continued to explore other generation opportunities, it regarded geothermal as its number one development priority.
She said the company had made good progress on several fronts, notably the completion of the 100MW Kawerau geothermal power station and the start of construction on the 132MW Nga Awa Purua geothermal power station, in partnership with Tauhara North No 2 Trust.
These projects were major milestones in the company's goal of having 400MW of geothermal power by 2012, she said.
Durbin said capital expenditure for the past year was $317.7 million, up $138.9 million from the previous year.
She said, overall, Mighty River Power had a strong year financially, despite Ebitdaf (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and financial instruments) and operating cashflow being down slightly.
Despite operating cashflow at $207.4m declining by $16.5 million from the previous year, accounting profit (net surplus after taxation) was up $14 million to $111 million due to accounting treatment of non-cash items under IFRS.
The Waikato drought, which reduced hydro volumes by 9 per cent, required running the Southdown gas-fired cogeneration plant to cover the shortfall, with increased wholesale electricity prices not fully offsetting higher gas purchase costs.
Shareholders' equity increased to $2,258 million after a revaluation of the group's hydro and cogeneration assets, in recognition of an uplift of $836 million in the hydro assets.
The retail arm Mercury Energy continued to perform well, she said, significantly growing its customer numbers in Wellington this year by more than 6000.
- NZPA
