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Nationalised German gas importer Uniper has started paying back a €13.5bn government bailout as it prepares for a possible sale to put it back in private hands.
The company, which was Europe’s biggest importer of Russian gas prior to President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, made a €530mn transfer to the German state in September.
A separate tranche of about €2.5bn will be transferred in early 2025, the company said on Tuesday, as it announced quarterly results.
Uniper became an ill-fated symbol of Germany’s over-reliance on Moscow in the wake of Putin’s 2022 invasion on Ukraine. Before the crisis, Europe’s biggest economy imported more than half of its gas from Russia.
Putin’s decision to cut gas supplies to Europe in 2022 pushed Uniper to the brink of collapse.
The German government stepped in, injecting €13.5bn in equity for a 99 per cent stake in the company, and granting it €6bn in loans in one of the biggest corporate bailouts in German history.
The company has quickly recovered, reporting “exceptionally good” earnings before interests and taxes of €6.4bn last year thanks to favourable gas market conditions and a successful hedging strategy.
Performance this year has been less strong, but the company is still expecting adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of between €1.9bn and €2.4bn for its full year, having generated €2.2bn in its first nine months of the year.
The German ministry of finance, which has said it aims to make a profit from its investment, announced in September that it was preparing to return the company to private hands, possibly by floating its shares.
Chief financial officer Jutta Dönges said Uniper welcomed the announcement, but stressed that any decisions about reprivatisation would be made by the government.
Uniper also used its results announcement on Tuesday to warn of slowing appetite for the hydrogen rollout the German government had placed at the centre of its green transition plans.
Reflecting a broader trend of hydrogen scepticism that has hit the share prices of US and European clean hydrogen companies in recent months, Dönges said the company had observed “a mood of caution” on the fuel among corporate customers.
It said that, as a result, the ramp-up of hydrogen power plants would be slower than the company had assumed 18 months ago.
Uniper — which runs projects that produce, transport and store hydrogen in Germany, Sweden, the UK and the Netherlands — said it would take longer than originally planned to meet its target of investing about €8bn in a green overhaul.
That goal would probably be met in the early 2030s instead of by the end of this decade, it said. The company added: “Uniper will only invest in projects that are based on a viable business case and that are expected to generate an appropriate return on investment.”
