KEY POINTS:
The country's largest electricity and gas distributor, Vector, said today it remained comfortable with analysts' predictions of full year profit from $150-165 million.
Vector said it expected June year earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of $632-642m.
Electricity volume distributed in the nine months to March increased by 0.7 per cent to 7928.7Gwh against the corresponding previous period, due to a 1.2 per cent increase in numbers of customers connected.
This volume was 1.1 per cent below expectations, due to warmer weather and reduced economic activity.
Gas transmission volumes increased 17 per cent to 78.8 petajoules (PJ) primarily due to power station and large industrial demand.
Gas distribution decreased 4.2 per cent to 16.0PJ due to warmer temperatures.
Natural gas sales volumes fell 16.6 per cent to 33.6PJ.
Total gas liquid (LPG and natural petrol) sales volumes fell by 9.5 per cent to 72,877 tonnes due to reduced production from the Kapuni field.
Liquigas throughput increased by 13.9 per cent to 97,121 tonnes due to increases in imported volumes to offset reduced production at Kapuni, Waihapa and Rimu.
The company said Vector Communications had had growth across its business.
The metering business had performed in line with expectations.
Shares in Vector were up 1 cent to $1.99 after trading between $1.69 and $2.92 over the past 12 months.
- NZPA
