Centrica’s (CNA) struggles continue. Squeezed by the price cap on UK household energy bills, lower wholesale commodities prices and nuclear power station outages, the group swung from a £987m statutory operating profit to an £849m loss in 2019. Net exceptional charges before tax came in at £1.1bn, including a £476m impairment on its exploration and production assets and £356m in restructuring costs.
Outgoing chief executive Iain Conn is keen for people to look beyond the headline statutory figures. “We have been battling to stabilise the underlying business,” he said. In the consumer division, UK customer accounts rose by 3 per cent thanks to growth from services, yet while switching slowed in the second half, 286,000 energy supply customers were still lost to cheaper competitors. With a £300m hit to revenue from the price cap, adjusted operating profit from the division dropped by a third to £505m.
Looking to 2020, management expects growth in the core customer-facing businesses to be “broadly offset” by commodities weakness in upstream activities. Implying a flat adjusted EPS of 7.3p versus consensus expectations of 8.9p, RBC Capital Markets said this was “essentially yet another profit warning”. The broker expects an adjusted pre-tax profit of £907m in 2020, up from £646m in 2019.
| CENTRICA (CNA) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 71.5p | MARKET VALUE: | £4.1bn | |
| TOUCH: | 71.5-72.5p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 141p | LOW: 64p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 4.9% | PE RATIO: | NA | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 21p* | NET DEBT: | £3.9bn | |
| Year to 31 Dec | Turnover (£bn) | Pre-tax profit (£bn) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2015 | 28.0 | -1.14 | -14.9 | 12 |
| 2016 | 27.1 | 2.19 | 31.4 | 12 |
| 2017 | 28.0 | 0.14 | 5.9 | 12 |
| 2018 | 23.3 | 0.58 | 3.3 | 12 |
| 2019 | 22.7 | -1.10 | -17.8 | 5 |
| % change | -3 | - | - | -58 |
| Ex Div: | 10-May | |||
| Payment: | 22-Jun | |||
| *Includes intangible assets of £4.0bn or 69.6p per share | ||||
