Uniper posts huge loss on Russia woes

Gas giant Uniper reported one of the biggest losses in German corporate history on Thursday, weeks after reaching a deal to be nationalised as Russia throttles energy supplies. 

The net loss of 40 billion euros ($39 billion) for the first nine months of the year came after the company had to pay sky-high gas prices following Moscow’s closure of a key pipeline.

“Uniper has for some time been procuring gas at significantly higher prices,” said the company’s chief financial officer Tiina Tuomela.

This has “left massive scars in our financial results,” she added. 

Moscow’s move to slash gas deliveries, in suspected relation for sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine, has plunged Europe into an energy crisis.

Germany has been particularly hard hit as it had relied heavily on Russian energy. Europe’s top economy is scrambling to find new supplies and has unveiled a 200-billion-euro fund to help households and businesses. Uniper, Germany’s biggest gas importer, said the massive loss includes about 10 billion euros of realised costs for gas replacement volumes and roughly 31 billion euros of anticipated future losses. 

It amounted to one of the biggest losses in German corporate history, Bloomberg News reported. The company’s shares slid 1.2 per cent on the Frankfurt stock exchange. They have fallen more than 90 percent this year. 

Tuomela said implementing the “stabilisation package” agreed with the Germany government had the “highest priority”. Germany reached a deal to nationalise Uniper in September, fearing that a failure of the firm could send shock waves through the energy sector and broader economy.

Berlin will take a nearly 99 per cent stake in the debt-laden company.

It will inject eight billion euros in cash into Uniper and buy 500 million euros of shares from its majority shareholder, the Finnish state-owned energy company Fortum.