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Eesti Energia's normalized net profit in the first quarter was €142.6 million, with the sales revenue of €582.7 million. The group earned nearly 60% of its total sales revenue outside Estonia. The group's investments more than doubled compared to the same period last year to €159.5 million, the lion's share of which went to the construction of wind and solar parks.

"Large-scale investments in renewable energy, in the power network and in the development of the chemical industry in Ida-Virumaa continued in the first quarter," Eesti Energia's CFO Marlen Tamm emphasized.

"The spring has shown that renewable energy helps to lower the price of electricity. In order to increase it, we made our biggest investments in the first quarter, 92 million euros – through our renewable energy company Enefit Green in the construction of wind and solar parks," Marlen Tamm said. "With the support of these investments, we are building Estonian wind and solar parks in Purtse and Sopi-Tootsi, as well as Lithuanian wind farms in Kelme, Akmene and Šilale."

"Among those, Purtse, Akmene and Šilale have already generated environmentally friendly electricity for the market at a reasonable price and thus increased our output of renewable energy," Marlen Tamm explained.

The group invested €92 million in renewable energy in the first quarter, being by €78.5 million more compared to last year, a nearly seven-fold increase.

€32 million to strengthen the power network and serve the record interest for micro-production

In addition to new renewable energy production units, the group invested in the power network. To develop the network, improve its reliability and enable micro-production, the investments of the network company Elektrilevi increased by 53% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, amounting to €32.2 million.

"The interest of people and companies to produce their own energy and thereby reduce their energy costs continues to set records," explained Marlen Tamm, saying that the group's network company received a record 2,626 requests from micro-producers during the first quarter, that is by 400 more than during the same period last year. According to Marlen Tamm, it is positive that despite the record interest, Elektrilevi was able to send fixed-price connection offers to micro-producers in an average of 11 days.

As of the end of the first quarter, there are nearly 17,000 electricity producers with a capacity of 649 megawatts in Elektrilevi’s network. At the same time, 1,331 new electricity producers were connected to the network during the first quarter, of which 1,121 were micro-producers. Over the first three months of the year, almost 1.5 times more producers and 2.5 times more production capacity have been connected to the network than in the same period last year.

Over 40% of electricity was produced from renewable sources

Although the group's renewable energy output increased by 30% to 539 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in the first quarter, total electricity production decreased by 21.9% to 1,298 GWh. The increase in renewable energy was mainly influenced by new wind farms added over the year in Estonia and Lithuania, as well as the higher share of wood waste in the production of heat and electricity in Enefit Power's thermal power plants. In the first quarter, the group produced 42% of electricity from renewable sources.

The decrease in electricity production was mainly influenced by low market prices of electricity and high prices of CO2 emission quotas, which is why oil shale plants with high carbon emissions could not enter the market. Regardless of the decrease in production, the output of the group’s subsidiary Enefit Power accounted for approximately 70% of all electricity produced in Estonia in the first quarter. Nearly 45% of this was produced by Auvere Power Plant, the reliability of which was 99%.

Eesti Energia's electricity sales volume in the first quarter remained at the same level as in the first quarter of 2022 and amounted to 2.9 terawatt-hours (-0.4%). More than half of the electricity (57%) was again sold outside Estonia: in Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Retail sales of electricity grew the most in Lithuania (17%) and Poland (18%).

Eesti Energia group's first quarter sales revenue increased by 2% compared to the same period last year and reached €582.7 million.

Normalized EBITDA was €202.3 million, being 59% higher than in the same period last year. The group's normalized net profit was €142.6 million in the first quarter, +85% compared to the same period last year.

Eesti Energia contributed a total of €127 million in taxes and environmental fees to the state in Q1 2023. Of this, €27 million as various direct taxes and €100 million as CO2 emission costs at the market price.

\*Normalized performance that does not include revaluation of derivatives