Advertisement

RWE sees net income stabilising at lower levels after 2014

ESSEN, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's RWE said it expected its net income to stabilise beyond 2014, albeit at lower levels, as it targets customer-friendly products in a bid to offset a decline in traditional power generation.

"We do not expect the dramatic trends of recent years to continue to quite the same extent," Chief Executive Peter Terium said at the group's annual general meeting on Wednesday.

RWE , Germany's second-largest utility by market value after E.ON , in March posted its first annual net loss in more than six decades, forced to take impairment charges on coal and gas plants, many of which have been made redundant by surplus renewable energy in its home market.

The expansion, most notably of solar power, has hit utilities across Europe, flooding a market already suffering from overcapacity and forcing energy firms to tap new growth areas, including helping clients save energy rather than use more.

Highlighting the need to foster ties with household clients, RWE said it had entered into cooperation with a maker of smart thermostats and smoke alarms, Nest Labs Inc, which was taken over by Google for $3.2 billion (1.9 billion pounds) earlier this year.

Terium said its British unit npower was the only utility in Britain to sell Nest's Learning Termostat, which tracks energy usage and employs that data to automatically set heating and cooling temperatures, helping to lower household heating bills by up to 20 percent.

"We are confident that the thermostat is the right product not only for the UK but also for our other markets in Europe," Terium said, without disclosing further details on the cooperation deal.

Npower is one of the big six suppliers in Britain, where it has about 3.6 million customers.

Terium also said he did not expect a final decision on the legality of Germany's nuclear fuel tax this year, saying the levy would continue to affect it until Germany's Federal Constitutional Court or the European Court of Justice rule on the matter.

(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; editing by Maria Sheahan and Jason Neely)