Seeking €21 billion, Enel will promote property world wide. Certainly one of them is in Ceará

Italian company announces strategic plan for the period from 2023 to 2025 that aims to reduce debt and focus operations on clean and renewable energy generation

With the aim of reducing its indebtedness and increasing the share of renewable energy matrices in its portfolio, Enel announced this Tuesday, November 22, a plan to raise €21 billion with the sale of assets. And one of the operations that can be put in the basket is the electricity distributor in Ceará.

In a separate statement, Companhia Energética do Ceará (Coelce) disclosed that Enel is contemplating the possibility of selling the shareholding control, held indirectly by the subsidiary Enel Brasil, with 97.9% of the share capital. However, he pointed out that “no concrete measures and procedures in this regard have been initiated”.

Since 2016 known by the public as Enel Distribuição Ceará, the company serves 4.38 million consumer units in the 184 municipalities of the State. It was privatized in 1998, having as its first owner a consortium formed by companies from Chile, Spain and Portugal.

The information that Coelce could be sold came on the day that global Enel announced its strategic plan for the period from 2023 to 2025, which among the measures aims to reduce net debt to a range of €51 billion to €52 billion. In the third quarter, net debt amounted to €69.7 billion, up 34.2% compared to the same period in 2021.

Enel’s plan also foresees focusing activities on “geographies that can add value, despite the challenges of the current scenario, leading to a leaner (corporate) structure and with more robust financial data”, said the company’s CEO, Francesco Starace, according to newspaper information Financial Times🇧🇷

In addition to Coelce, Enel is analyzing the possibility of selling natural gas assets in Spain and leaving countries like Argentina and Peru, with a view to concentrating its operations and investments in renewable and clean matrices in Europe and the United States. For this, Enel estimates that it will invest around €37 billion over the next three years.

The sale of Coelce would be another asset that Enel gives up in Brazil. In September, the company sold the energy distributor it owned in Goiás to Equatorial, after years of friction with the state government. Before that, in June, Enel Brasil closed the sale of the Fortaleza Thermoelectric Power Station (Termofortaleza) to Eneva.

The moves do not mean that Enel will leave the country. According to Starace told the Financial TimesBrazil, Chile and Colombia remain the company’s priority emerging markets, seeing “strong growth” in them.

Even so, Enel’s focus will be on Europe, specifically Italy and Spain, in addition to the United States, with 90% of investments in power generation and distribution going to these countries, “considering the more favorable regulatory environments in these countries”, according to the company’s statement.

Enel’s strategic plan for the period 2023 to 2025 calls for Ebitda to rise to a range of €22.2 billion to €22.8 billion.

The forecast for this year is that it will be in a range of 19 billion and 19.6 billion euros. In the nine months ended at the end of September, Enel recorded an Ebitda of 12.4 billion euros, up 8.8% compared to the same period in 2021.

The company expects to also be able to increase the dividend per share, from €0.40 forecast for 2022 to €0.43 by 2025.

Listed on the Milan Stock Exchange, Enel shares were up 0.53% at around 12:20 pm at €5.11. In the year, they accumulate a drop of 27.4%, taking the market value to € 51.9 billion.

Source: Neofeed