Electricity price increases in the Republic have contributed towards a rise in turnover at Viridian for the six months to September 30th.
The company has reported operating profits of £70.4 million, up from £64.2 million, an increase of 9.6 per cent. Turnover during the period rose from £360 million to £409 million, a rise of almost 14 per cent.
The company which operates its assets in the Republic, Viridian Power and Energy, reported particularly strong returns, with turnover climbing to £162 million from £119 million. The company said this was "primarily due to volume growth in the Republic together with increased prices associated with rising fuel costs".
While Viridian is entitled to charge large industrial users and SMEs whatever it chooses, the increases awarded to ESB have a major impact on the whole market. When the energy regulator Tom Reeves sanctions an ESB price rise, it normally has the effect of increasing prices for customers of private suppliers too.
While Viridian's operations in the Republic benefited from the fuel based price increases, there was some bad news during the period under review. This involved an "outage" or essential repair needed to its Huntstown plant in north Co Dublin.
Also pushing up costs were charges associated with CO2 emissions. Both of these factors meant that operating profits were reduced to £14.9 million from £16.1 million, a drop of 7.4 per cent.
Excluding the outage, the Huntstown plant continued to perform well and was available to generate power 95 per cent of the time. The company hopes to bring a second Huntstown plan into operation in autumn 2007 and about €18 million has been invested in this project already. The company expects to spend €250 million in total on this new gas fired plant.
The markets warmly welcomed the group interim results yesterday and the shares traded up 6 per cent in Dublin and 8 per cent in London.
Analysts said the figures were ahead of expectations. Jack Gorman, analyst with Davy said: "These are strong results from Viridian and are indicative of a sound operating performance with attractive underlying fundamentals".
"We would look to add to weightings on any significant weakness in the stock and see continued attraction in the yield," he added.
While much attention was paid yesterday to the returns from the Republic, he said company's Northern Ireland Electricity division was also performing very strongly. Profits at this division rose to £49.5 million from £42.8 million.
Chief executive Patrick Haren said Viridian was growing its customer numbers in the Republic through its retail arm, Energia.
