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LONDON (Alliance News) - Renewables Infrastructure Group Ltd said on Tuesday its pretax profit was down for 2015, due to the impact of government changes to renewable incentives, but raised its dividend in light of the scale and diversification of its portfolio.
The renewable energy infrastructure company reported a pretax profit for the year ended December of GBP17.0 million, down from GBP23.3 million in 2014, saying its margins were hit by the announcement in the July UK Summer Budget that the government would remove the benefit to renewable generators of selling Levy Exemption Certificates from August 2015.
This caused a net reduction of GBP20.2 million to Renewables Infrastructure's portfolio value, which also caused its earnings per share to be down for the year at 3.0 pence, from 3.4p. Excluding the impact of this, the company said it would have reported a pretax profit of GBP37.2 million for the year and earnings per share of 6.6p.
Renewables Infrastructure said its portfolio generation capacity was up 50% to 658 megawatts, with the addition of seven extra projects meaning it now had a total of 36 investments in the UK, Ireland and France. The company said its portfolio value stood at GBP712.3 million at December 31, from GBP472.9 million the previous year.
Net cash inflows from the investment portfolio were GBP34.0 million for the year, up from GBP30.6 million, despite "significantly lower wholesale power prices".
In light of this, Renewables Infrastructure raised its total dividend per share for the year to 6.19p from 6.08p, after increasing dividend for the second half of the year to 3.11p from 3.08p.
In 2016 the company said it plans to move towards a quarterly dividend from semi-annual, targeting 1.5625p per share per quarter, amounting to an aggregate target dividend of 6.25p per share for the financial year to December 31, 2016.
"2015 has been a dynamic year for Renewables Infrastructure. Generation has been strong and the Company has shown resilience in the face of twin challenges posed by further weakening in power prices and UK government changes to renewables incentives," said Chairman Helen Mahy.
Shares in Renewables Infrastructure were up 0.6% at 96.75p on Tuesday morning.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland
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