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SSE said its chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies would retire next year after more than 11 years in charge, as the UK energy group reported a rise of more than a quarter in half-year earnings.
Sir John Manzoni, SSE’s chair and former UK cabinet secretary, paid tribute to Phillips-Davies, saying he had grown the company’s UK and Irish core business while expanding overseas, and promised a “smooth and orderly transition” to new leadership. Phillips-Davies will remain in position until a successor is found.
SSE said adjusted pre-tax profits in the six months to the end of September had risen 26.4 per cent to £714.5mn.
Windier weather and a more than 1 gigawatt increase in its capacity helped its renewables arm generate an almost fourfold rise in operating profits, with power output rising by about 45 per cent.
Adjusted operating profits in its electricity networks business rose 50 per cent against a year earlier as distribution tariffs rose to account for several years of inflation.
SSE, one of the UK’s largest renewables companies, generated 5.4 terawatt hours of renewable electricity in the six-month period — enough to power more than 1.6mn homes for a year — mostly through onshore wind.
The company is also halfway through a £20bn five-year investment plan that includes connecting Shetland to the UK’s energy grid for the first time and a 2GW subsea cable that will run from Peterhead in Scotland to North Yorkshire.
Phillips-Davies said the company was aligned with the Labour government’s plans for a zero-carbon electricity system by 2030, which involves doubling onshore wind, tripling solar power and quadrupling offshore wind. “We are encouraged by the increasing attractiveness of our main markets,” he said.
SSE said it expected work to be finished on the first phase of the world’s largest offshore wind farm, the 3.6GW Dogger Bank project, by the second half of next year. It said the second phase, Dogger Bank B, was making “good progress”, and that despite slower than expected progress on installing turbines, equity returns across all three phases were above its own hurdle rates.
