EDF boss pledges to turn the company around after record $19 billion losses

By Benjamin Mallett

PARIS, Feb 17 (Reuters) – EDF boss Luc Remont pledged on Friday to redress the situation of the French public service, which recorded record net losses of 17.9 billion euros in 2022 (19 billions of dollars), weighed down by an unprecedented number of failures in its reactors.

Production at the company’s nuclear power plants has fallen to its lowest level in 34 years, forcing EDF to buy electricity on the market to supply its customers, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused a sharp rising electricity prices across Europe.

EDF’s profits were also hit by government measures aimed at limiting the rise in electricity bills for French households and protecting them from rising inflation.

The group, which is in full nationalization, posted a negative annual operating result or EBITDA of 5 billion euros and its net debt amounted to 64.5 billion euros, against 43 billion a year earlier.

“Today, our priority is to put EDF back on track,” Luc Remont, CEO of EDF, appointed by the government in November to redirect the group, told the press.

Its objective is for French nuclear production to be between 300 and 330 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2023, compared to 279 TWh last year, the lowest since 1988 and making France a net importer of electricity for the first time since 1980.

(Additional reporting by America Hernandez; writing by Silvia Aloisi; editing in Spanish by Tomás Cobos)