PARIS, France - French company Suez Environnement reported growth in its European water division but overall full-year group net profits were down in 2015.
A financial statement for the year showed that overall revenue was up 5.7% to €15.4 billion with core earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) up by 4.1% to €2.75 billion.
However, net income fell 2.2% to €408m, with Bloomberg reporting a knock on effect to the company’s share price, falling 1.6% to €16.62 at 09:16am this morning.
Suez’s Water Europe division reported revenues of €4.7 billion in 2015, a 3.3% increase.
This included improved performance in France (1.1%) and Chile (0.9%).
Commenting on the growth in Latin America, Suez said “regulated activities in Chile also benefited from rate increases (up 6.8%)”.
The European water division achieved an organic EBITDA increase of +3.9% (+€48m), which the company attributed to a “more positive volume performance than the medium-term trend in all countries due to very favourable summer weather conditions, favourable tariff indexation in Chile and dynamic development in the new “Advanced Solutions” businesses””.
Jean-Louis Chaussade, CEO, said:“In what remains an uncertain environment, we are redoubling our commercial development efforts and maintaining a strong focus on cost control and continued efficiency and competitiveness improvement. We can therefore look with confidence to 2016.”
It was at the end of last year when the French company unified all of its subsidiary companies under the single Suez brand (read story).
The CEO added: “The success of the single brand, supporting a more integrated group, shows the outstanding mobilization of all the teams in order to meet and even exceed the targets we had set.”
Looking ahead, Suez said it’s expecting organic revenue growth of more than 2% in 2016 with an ambition to reach €3 billion in EBITDA in 2017.
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