Earnings call transcript: E.ON Q2 2025 sees strong EBITDA growth

E.ON SE reported a robust performance for the second quarter of 2025, with a significant increase in adjusted Group EBITDA and net income. With a market capitalization of €48.8 billion and impressive year-to-date returns of 45%, the company remains optimistic about its strategic investments and future growth. The energy giant’s focus on digital infrastructure and network expansion positions it well for the ongoing energy transition. According to InvestingPro analysis, E.ON currently appears fairly valued based on its Fair Value metrics.

Key Takeaways

• Adjusted Group EBITDA rose 13.10% year-over-year to €5.5 billion.
• Investments increased by 11% to €3.2 billion in the first half of 2025.
• E.ON targets full-year EBITDA guidance of €9.6-9.8 billion.
• Strategic focus on expanding digital infrastructure and network investments.

Company Performance

E.ON demonstrated strong financial performance in Q2 2025, driven by strategic investments in digital infrastructure and network expansion. The company’s adjusted Group EBITDA grew by 13.10% year-over-year, reflecting its effective operational strategies. E.ON’s continued focus on customer solutions and energy infrastructure is expected to bolster its competitive position in the energy sector.

Financial Highlights

• Adjusted Group EBITDA: €5.5 billion, up 13.10% year-over-year.
• Adjusted Group Net Income: €1.9 billion.
• Investments: €3.2 billion, an 11% increase in the first half of 2025.

Outlook & Guidance

E.ON maintains its full-year EBITDA guidance of €9.6-9.8 billion. Looking ahead, the company plans to invest €43 billion until 2028, focusing on network expansion and digitalization. With a beta of 0.73, indicating lower volatility than the market, and a strong Financial Health Score of "GOOD" from InvestingPro, E.ON aims to achieve an adjusted Group EBITDA of over €11.3 billion by 2028, contingent on favorable regulatory decisions for the 2029 investment period.

Executive Commentary

Leonard Birnbaum, CEO of E.ON, emphasized the company’s transition from power generation to focusing on energy infrastructure and customer solutions. He stated, "Today, we are no longer a power generator. We are fully focused on the backbone of the energy transition, energy infrastructure, and customer solutions." Birnbaum also highlighted the planned investments, saying, "Our planned investments of €43 billion up until 2028 position us well."

Risks and Challenges

• Regulatory Environment: Future investments depend heavily on regulatory decisions.
• Energy Transition: The shift towards renewable energy sources requires significant infrastructure upgrades.
• Grid Connection: Managing grid connection and data center capacity remains a challenge.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on the regulatory environment’s impact on future investments and the role of gas-fired power plants in the energy transition. CEO Leonard Birnbaum acknowledged the importance of these elements, noting the necessity of gas-fired plants in the current energy landscape.

Full transcript - E.ON SE (EOAN) Q2 2025:

Moderator, E.ON: Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to our virtual half year press conference in Essen. I’m delighted to welcome you here today. Me in this room is our CEO, Leonard Birnbaum our CFO, Nadia Jacobi, who will provide you with an update on our figures for the half year. Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to ask your questions. And with this, would like to pass the floor to our CEO, Leonard Bernhout.

Leonard Birnbaum, CEO, E.ON: Members of the press, ladies and gentlemen, good morning from me as well. A warm welcome to E. ON’s half year press conference. Today, are presenting our financial results for the first six months of the year. But I’d like to start with two other numbers.

First, this ON turned 25. This anniversary fills us with pride and a sense of responsibility. Considering during our predecessor companies, Faber, we were even included in the decks exactly sixty years ago this week. Second, today marks exactly one hundred days since Germany’s new federal government took office and it was accompanied by ambitious promises including on energy policy.

And this is what I want to talk about briefly before I present the numbers. So 25 is a relatively short period of time for a corporation, but it is long in an energy world that has changed fundamentally. That’s why over the last ten years, in particularly, we have successfully realigned our business by spinning off our conventional generation businesses to create Uniper in 2016 by reconfiguring our nuclear waste disposal obligations in 2016, 2017 by integrating innogy’s network and retail business and transferring our global renewables between 2018 and 2020 and the post merger integration and the transfer of the global renewables business in 2020 and 2021 to RWE. Today, we are no longer a power generator. We are fully focused on the backbone of the energy transition, energy infrastructure and customer solutions.

And that’s where we want to be Europe’s playmaker. It is where the energy transition success will be decided today. And that’s why our business model is working and that’s why E. ON’s ambitious growth strategy positions us well. Our planned investments of €43,000,000,000 up until 2028, the figure you will already know.

For us, being a playmaker also means actively participating in the political debates. Our preliminary conclusion after the first one hundred days is that many topics have been addressed right and now it’s time to focus on implementation. I’d like to emphasize the positives. First, the clear commitment not to an energy transition at any price, but to an effective and efficient energy transition. Sustainability needs to be accompanied by cost efficiency and security of supply and that requires a fresh start also to strengthen Germany’s competitiveness again.

And second, the intention to monitor a needs based energy system planning, avoiding unnecessary large generating a network capacity requires periodic reality checks rather than rigid policy targets. And third, the tangible efforts to be more pragmatic. One example of this is starting to build new gas fired power generation instead of endlessly discussing the right target figure. But also noteworthy is the effort to reduce bureaucracy and this includes demonstrating greater courage to be innovative and open to new technologies. After the summer break, it will be important for the government to translate these positive signals into as many specific actions as possible and a willingness to draw conclusions from monitoring will be crucial.

So build only what’s really needed. If actual demand turns out to be lower than the planning numbers, this needs to have consequences. This applies to electricity as well as to hydrogen and it’s completely independent of the fact that in the vast majority of the cases, electrification is the cheapest way to achieve climate targets. Built in what in a way that minimizes system costs. The costs are the biggest driver for end user prices.

Why is it still possible for renewables to be built where there is no demand and the grid is already at its limit? When will the technology neutral capacity market be implemented with flexibility? When will the construction of backup power plants begin? Dramatically reduce subsidies, that’s what we also need to address. Why are capacity subsidized that are not needed and technologies that have long been economically viable?

Why are energy storage devices given blanket exemption from grid fees even though many of these devices don’t relieve the burden on the grids and increase the costs for customers? And focus on flexibility. How can we leverage the enormous potential of flexibility to save customers’ money and enhance security of supply? E. ON is ready to offer its expertise to help move things forward.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are doing everything we can to drive the energy transition ourselves and this is reflected in our financial figures as well. We recorded adjusted group EBITDA of EUR 5,500,000,000.0 and an adjusted group net income of EUR 1,900,000,000.0 in the 2025. And this is a seamless continuation of our strong first quarter performance and puts us right on track to achieve our full year guidance for 2025. This is down to our employees’ hard work. It’s not a given.

So a big thank you for your great work in the first six months of this year. Ioann, by the way, was named the best employer for people aged 16 to 34 in The UK by the Sunday Times this year. This shows how attractive E. ON is as an employer. And it shows how attractive it is to drive forward the energy transition as a key player for young people and basically for anyone who really wants to make a difference.

Also, the driver of the energy transition, we continued heavily in the first half of this year. The €3,500,000,000 we invested once again reached new benchmark and represents a further increase compared to the prior year period. Most of our investments continue to go toward our energy network business. This is because we are working hard to expand our networks, for example, to supply the power to the factories of six major automotive manufacturers in Slovakia and to connect growing number of large and small PV systems in Czech and Hungary and in Bavaria where which already has 28 gigawatts of installed PV and almost as much as Spain’s 32 gigawatt. We are also already at work today to procure what we need to expand and modernize our networks.

We launched a large scale procurement initiative in the first half of the year by concluding more than €6,000,000,000 in long term contracts with leading European manufacturers to suppliers with technical equipment like transformers. This benefits not only the energy transition, but also Europe’s component supply industry. In the first half of the year, we reached another milestone in digitization as well. Since this summer, our German power grid approximately 700,000 kilometers long has a digital twin that already maps 55,000,000 components. One thing the twin enables us to do is to evaluate connection requests just in a few seconds.

This makes our next work expansion even more efficient for our customers. Our rollout of smart meters is making progress, too. By the end of the 2025, we installed more than 750,000 smart meters and we will reach 1,000,000 early next next year, more than other meter operators in the country. And that’s despite the fact that the rollout in Germany remains expensive, complicated and bureaucratic, yet we are demonstrating how to get it done. This reinforces our view that the rollout in Germany should be entrusted exclusively to network operators and that the superfluous role of the competitive metering point operator should be abolished.

Digital infrastructure is playing an increasingly important role in our business and other aspects as well. Data centers, a new digital backbone for Germany’s economy is currently being created and we are helping to build it. Data centers, which together consume more than one gigawatt of power are already connected to our networks today. We are connecting five gigawatts at the moment and on top we have connection requests for more than 50 gigawatts. That’s all in addition to the consistently high number of connection requests for renewables and batteries.

Data centers are also becoming increasingly important for our energy infrastructure solutions business. In June, we started into a strategic partnership with CyrusOne, a leading global provider of state of the art high performance data centers. Data centers not only have the high power requirements, but also have to comply with increasingly stringent energy efficiency regulations. We have the right solutions for them such as waste heat utilization or on-site power generation. We also help our private customers become players in the energy transition.

They are increasingly interested in flexibility and flexible tariffs. And this is despite the fact that we are nowhere near being able to leverage the full potential of flexibility because of the slow meter rollout in Germany. The full potential is already considerable. By 2025, the German households could achieve nearly 15.6 terawatt hours and that would be the equivalent of 4,000,004 person households in Germany. By 02/1930, this figure could even be double.

So there is potential. You see, in our anniversary year, E. ON is looking ahead positively to the future. Yet it must also be clear to everyone that the energy transition will require billions in private capital in the upcoming years. We can therefore discuss many levers for better energy transition, but Germany’s future network regulation is the elephant in the room.

What would will network regulation look like? And we are much more critical here because the federal network agencies draft determinations actually risk hindering Germany’s energy transition. Why? Because the return on equity on future network investments is far too low by international standards because network operators now also face a host of additional regulatory hurdles relating to network costs and because despite the positive signals, network operators are therefore left with lower earnings despite increased investment needs. Let’s start with investments.

Unless the ROE, return on investment, is competitive internationally, private investment will not flow into Germany’s networks but into other countries. The United Kingdom, for example, is currently introducing target regulatory incentives. The UK regulators proposals foresee a nominal ROE of around 8% after taxes and other countries like Poland and The Czech Republic already reward network investments with appropriate returns. Germany too urgently needs an ROE that reflects investors’ expectations and this is a nominal ROE of 8% after taxes. Our multibillion euro investment program relies on long term debt financing as well.

Surprisingly, the Federal Network Agency’s latest proposals foresee a fixed return on debt based on the average interest rate of the last seven years. In other words, the calculation of the return includes a period of historically low interest rates and it excludes any adjustments And this will artificially lower the regulatory return on debt. To illustrate that, if you were to take out a 4% loan and then invest that money at 3%, that is what we would then have to do. If you do that or you won’t do that, can we do it? No, of course not.

Eons billions of investments each year are exposed to enterprise risk, but we can’t do that at any price. We can only do this if the return on equity and debt is worthwhile. The same applies to the regulatory framework for additional network costs. Here, the Federal Network Agency proposes various changes that penalize network operators like E. ON that are particularly committed to promoting the energy transition in their region.

I’d like to highlight three key points here. First, alongside various methodological changes, the agency proposes shortening the efficiency benchmark period to three years and significantly increasing the size of each benchmark group. That the agency hasn’t yet conducted a comprehensive impact assessment for this study is particularly worrisome. The result is that efficient network operators risk being classified as inefficient because their peer group is expended to include a large number of non comparable network operators. The benchmarks result won’t be available until 2028 and this creates a lot of planning uncertainty for network operators.

So that means from a business perspective, every network operator would have to immediately start as a precautionary measure doing everything it can to reduce personnel and costs. But for the ongoing implementation of the energy transition, this would be completely counterproductive because the demand is increasing. Second, the agency now wants the efficiency benchmark to factor in re dispatch costs. This would sounds harmless. This would especially impact distribution network operators whose networks have integrated lots of PV and wind power plants.

Three E. ON subsidiaries, Abakon, Bayernburg and Edus account for more than 60% of all re dispatch costs in Germany distribution networks last year. This is because Germany still provides blanket subsidies to renewables facilities, some of which were even built in regions where the renewables feed in already often exceeds annual peak load. And this results in the re dispatch costs that are beyond the local network operators control. The efficiency benchmark, however, is only supposed to factor in controllable costs, otherwise you are penalized.

Third, in the upcoming regular period it’s not supposed to have any inflation adjustment for two to of the five years consequently. So we have inflation every year but these added costs can only be recouped to a certain extent and this reduces the return. We therefore urge the Federal Network Agency to listen to the network operators’ objective arguments, which are all on the table with an open mind. We remain positive and continue to place our faith in the common will and understanding of all stakeholders. After all, the energy industry, the Federal Network Agency and the policymakers ultimately want the same thing, a function and affordable transition.

And this can only be achieved with private investment. That can only happen with a future oriented regulatory system. And with that, I now hand things over to Nadia.

Moderator, E.ON: Thank you very much, Leo and good morning to you all. I would now like to give you a closer look at our financial performance in the 2025. I’ll start with three key messages. First, E. ON again delivered strong operating and financial results.

The adjusted group EBITDA amounted to €5,500,000,000 adjusted group net income to €1,900,000,000 This represents year over year increases of 1310%, respectively, compared to the previous year. Second, our investments were again a key driver of our earnings growth. And we are consistently pursuing our growth path. Therefore, we increased our investments in the first half of the year by 11% compared to the prior year period to €3,200,000,000 Third, we reaffirm our guidance for the current fiscal year as well as our outlook for 2028, including our dividend policy. For 2025, we continue to expect adjusted group EBITDA in a range of €9,600,000,000 to €9,800,000,000 We currently expect our earnings to be at the upper end of the guidance range by the end of the year, driven by temporary value neutral effects in our Energy Networks business.

We expect our full year adjusted group net income to be in the middle of our guidance range of 2,850,000,000.00 to €3,050,000,000 We intend to increase adjusted group EBITDA to more than €11,300,000,000 by 2028. I’ll now turn to our segment’s adjusted EBITDA performance in the first half of the year. Our largest segment, Energy Networks, recorded a significant earnings increase. Adjusted EBITDA increased to €4,000,000,000 which is around 20% above the prior year figure of €3,300,000,000 This positive performance is primarily attributable to accelerated investments to expand, modernize and digitalize network infrastructure. As already mentioned, temporary value neutral effects led to additional earnings contributions, which, in line with regulatory requirements, are being made up for from previous years or will be passed through to our customers over time.

Our energy retail’s adjusted EBITDA declined slightly year over year by around €100,000,000 to €1,300,000,000 After a strong start to the year, the second quarter saw normalization effects relating, among others, to the weather. The first quarter was relatively cold. The second quarter was warm and sunny. This led to declining sales volume in The Netherlands and The United Kingdom, among other countries. In addition, as expected, margins in our B2B and B2C business in The United Kingdom declined particular, more private customers switched to fixed price contracts.

Overall, we are on track. Our Energy Retail segment will achieve its full year targets. Our Energy Infrastructure Solutions segment significantly grew its adjusted EBITDA in the first half of the year to around €330,000,000 Year over year, that’s an increase of more than 30%. Weather driven volume effects, the commissioning of new projects and better asset availability, particularly in Scandinavia and The United Kingdom, were the main factors. The consistent implementation of our investment program continued as well.

In the first six months alone, E. ON invested €3,200,000,000 This represents a year over year increase of more than €300,000,000 We are planning to invest a total of around €8,600,000,000 in our network and customer solutions businesses in the current fiscal year. These investments will not only drive the energy transition forward, they also lay the foundation for future earnings growth. Investments in our Energy Networks segment in the first half of the year totaled more than €2,500,000,000 a significant year over year increase of €400,000,000 These investments consisted of a large number of individual projects to expand, modernize and digitalize our network infrastructure in our regions. In energy retail, we invested about €220,000,000 This included, among other things, the expansion of our Europe wide e mobility charging infrastructure, digital infrastructure for flexibility solutions and tariffs for our customers and expanding our digital customer offerings.

Energy Infrastructure Solutions invested around €350,000,000 primarily to provide sustainable energy solutions to support our B2B customers’ decarbonization journeys. As you can see, being a playmaker in the energy transition involves investing billions every year, mostly in our energy networks business. For example, in 2024, about 70% of our network investments, that’s more than €4,000,000,000 in total, were in Germany. As Leo Bernbaum explained, our investments need to create value. The Federal Network Agency’s current draft determinations don’t yet indicate the financial conditions that financial conditions will be put in place that are internationally competitive through enough to attract additional private investments.

The network agency needs to continue to ensure an appropriate return on capital. Ladies and gentlemen, we delivered a successful first half of the year and again reaffirmed our clear growth trajectory for the years ahead. Our investments and consistent operational implementation remain a basis for creating added value for our customers and investors. And this with that, I would like to pass the floor to Lars Rosamec for your questions.

Leonard Birnbaum, CEO, E.ON: Nadia, Leo, thank you very much for your presentations. Now I’d like to open the Q and As. You know that, as usual, I would like to raise the hand in Teams, and I can already see a few hands. And then when I call your name, please switch on your camera so we can see you here in the room. The first question comes from Christoph Steins from Reuters.

Mr. Steins, please. Right. Let’s see if I can switch on the camera. Now we can see you.

Good morning. I have a few questions, Mr. Bimbaum. One question concerning your ongoing investment program. How firm is it?

Will a readjustment be required if the regulatory environment doesn’t improve? Or is that fixed? Would might you spend capital elsewhere? And that then leads me to my second question. Your share price has developed quite well since the start of the year.

It’s gone up by 40%. So the investors appear to like your strategy and support your strategy. Let me ask you directly, share buybacks, to what extent is that an option for you to create value for shareholders going forward? This is something you haven’t done to a great extent up until now. But as part of this capital allocation question, other companies look at this option as well?

And I’d like to hear your opinion on this. That would be great. Thanks. Yes. First of all, concerning the ongoing investments, let me say that the there are two influential factors there.

One is the absolute need, the absolute demand. And we are just excited as you are to and looking forward to the result of this monitoring process. My prediction would be that the absolute demand will be lower than the current plans, as I said in my speech, but that will not have any impact on the expansion needs at E. ON. It might affect renewables, but not networks.

Why? Because we still have some catching up to do as we see from the many bottlenecks we already have today. So we need to continue investing and we are seeing continued demand and requests from customers. So we do not assume that the investment program during this regulatory period until 2028 will be affected in any way. And it’s important to say when we talk about regulation, we talk about regulation with the regulatory period, which starts in 2029 until 02/1934.

Up until 2028, we have a fully financed strategy for our networks. So much on that. The growth perspective is unlimited. Now your second question shared by Ebeck. I don’t want to speculate as to what poor regulation would mean because our logic is that we focus on providing or receiving adequate regulation that allows us to continue our growth path, which is important for our shareholders, but also for the energy transition and also for our customers.

And if we achieve that, that question won’t come up because then we will continue on our growth path as we have done in the last few years so successfully. And that met with the approval from the investors. And commenting on the 40% you just mentioned, yes, the price has gone up well. But part of the truth is also that in Q4, when the uncertainty in Germany was relatively high and we had a negative court judgment on regulation, the price went down. Had you taken another point in time twelve months ago, we would have been much more closer to the normal market development.

Okay, thank you. Then the next question from Katjagorana Krupp from Handelsblad. Ms. Krupp, please. I have another question to add to what Mr.

Streitz asked. So if the results of the monitoring process are not so important, how you will invest for how you will invest in the coming years, why are the results relevant to you at all? Because you have already explained that you can’t wait to see the results of this monitoring process and that it might show that the market is oversized or over dimensioned. Maybe you can comment on that. And my second question would be the premiers of the Northern German Federal States are calling on Germany to or calling for Germany to be subdivided to do several energy price zones.

What’s your take on that? Well, a nice article on the monitoring you wrote. Congratulations on that. So one thing is how important is monitoring for E. ON’s investment planning?

That’s one question. But the more important question is how important is it for our customers’ bills? And monitoring has a huge impact on our customers’ bills and therefore it’s also relevant for us even if it doesn’t change our expansion needs. Let me give you an example here. What can happen or the outcome could be, for example, that the hydrogen demand will the ramp up will be much slower than assumed up until now.

And if the hydrogen demand ramp up is lower, then we need less renewables. And if we need less renewables, particularly and build less renewables in areas where we only produce bottlenecks and re dispatch, then we have fewer costs for our customers. But that will not have any impact on E. ON. So the monitoring is important for the energy transition as a whole.

And I believe it’s a good idea to simply do a fact check and to think are the assumptions or wonder whether the assumptions we had five years ago are still the right ones. So it’s important for the customers, but it doesn’t affect our growth perspective in the networks because we have so much catching up to do as you can tell from all the bottlenecks. And as far as electricity price zones are concerned, that’s an evergreen topic that comes up again and again. The industry is very clear here. There was an investigation at European level as to what advantages this would provide and five zones would mean €320,000,000 in benefits.

So it’s not worth doing it from that perspective. And my second answer is, I’m in two minds here concerning this discussion because if we subdivide Germany, we reduce the liquidity in the wholesale markets and then it will become more difficult for us to sell fixed price products to our customers because we have less liquid markets, which would lead to cost increases for our customers. And ultimately, even in Northern Germany, you need to think carefully what we want. When they say we want lower electricity price up in the North, then the answer of the people in the South would be then bear all of the network charge. Why should we assume your offshore network costs if we don’t have a benefit from it?

So this would open a discussion which, to be honest, wouldn’t lead us anywhere. Thank you, Ms. Krupp, for your questions. The next question is from Birsenide talking Ms. Becker, please.

Good morning. I have two questions left. I would like to know why your adjusted group EBIT was declined so much for the half year. And then I’d like to look at your debt. I haven’t heard how high the leverage is, but you are sort of coming into regions that might be cause for concern.

Nadia, maybe you can answer that one. Yes. Let me start with the second question. No, we are not entering difficult territory concerning our debt because we have the debt factor. So how much of the EBITDA can we afford as an economic net debt and that was 4.5 at the end of last year.

And we are measuring that for the full year only because this is the right matching to do, and we are fully on track there. Our balance sheet headroom of 5,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000 is unchanged as we have communicated. And our investment program, which we have confirmed today, is fully financed. And we there’s still some headroom to invest in the future as well. The adjusted net income, well, the adjusted income can’t be looked at on a quarterly basis really.

As you can see, our adjusted net income increases by 10% compared to the same period last year, so half year to half year. We are fully on track. There have been slight shifts between depreciations and interests, which behave differently to the margin development. Depreciation is flat. Margin development is affected by seasonal factors.

So you should look at the whole picture for the half year. Thank you, Nadia. Sorry, can I ask one more question? Yes, go ahead. I can from other companies have a rolling twelve months EBITDA and use that as a yardstick.

Okay, I give you an outlook now. And as I said, the EBITDA, I mean, we earn the same in every single quarter. And when our rating agency judges, they look at the result for the full year and our outlook, our guidance for our economic net debt up until the end of the year is just below €44,000,000,000 And you can link that to the 9,600,000,000.0 to €9,800,000,000 of EBITDA. And if you then divide it, then you’ll see that it’s roughly the same order of magnitude as at the end of last year. Does that answer your question?

Yes, thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Becker. We have two further questions, one from DPIOfx, Ms. Wagner and Mr.

Wiedemann from Tagrispiegel. Ms. Wagner, please, first. Good morning, Ms. Wagner.

Hello and good morning. I’d like to focus on two questions. One concerning the regulatory period, the fifth regulatory period, the consultation process is over. How much potential do you still see there? And maybe you can also give us a calculation example concerning your equity capital return, 1% up, 1% down.

What would that mean? What would be the consequences for E. ON? And secondly, very specific for this report, the changed customer behavior in The UK, fixed price contracts you have there, do you see a trend there? Or do you expect the customers to return into higher margin contracts?

I’d like to hear your views on that as well. Thank you. Okay. Let me comment on the fifth regulatory period, Ms. Weichler.

I wouldn’t want to speculate now as to where and how the negotiations are progressing. The facts are on the table. The consultation process isn’t over. We have submitted our comments. The industry has submitted our comments and these comments are now being discussed and then the Federal Network Agency will form its opinion and then come up with a decision which will then discuss again and it will become then binding at some point in time.

It’s not that the consultation is over and everything is on the table and we have to live with it. That’s not the situation. It’s still an ongoing process, which will end sometime at the end of the year or early next year and provide results by then. And the second thing is we are still optimistic that the outcome at the end will be something that’s acceptable. And we criticized what’s on the table and we voiced our opinion very clearly and we will discuss this in an appropriate way with the Federal Network Agency.

And this will then produce a result. But again, we all have the same objective. The politicians, regulator and the energy suppliers want affordable, efficient energy transition for the customers. And we are seeing that on the political side with the monitoring process and on the regulator side and on our side as well. So at the end, I believe we will achieve a solution that will make that possible.

So fundamentally, I’m still optimistic, not opportunistic, but optimistic despite many of the critical points I mentioned. Now you asked about the quantification. I wouldn’t want to quantify this because there are many influential variables going into different directions. But let me say one thing, the return on equity is discussed a lot and cheap. So if you look at what it would cost for all network operators to get more 100 basis points of return on Equitable, that is marginal compared to the bottlenecks we’ve created by not creating too much infrastructure.

So let’s not speculate there. At the end of the day, the facts are on the table. There is the joint will and therefore I assume that we will come to an acceptable solution.

Moderator, E.ON: And then we still had the question concerning customers in The UK. Customer development in The UK is nothing unusual for us. In the current market, our competitors are also seeing changes from standard variable tariffs to fixed price tariffs, but currently we’re still above the level that we saw before the crisis. As far as the standard variable tariff customers are concerned. So we welcome the fact that customers are dealing with the topic of energy.

We anticipated that in our outlook. This is not a new trend to us, but it’s something that we consider to be a typical normalization that we also included and anticipated in our outlook. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Weichner.

Next please, Karsten Wiedemann from Tagrispiegel. Thank you. I have two questions. Number one, concerning the area of grid expansion and what you are doing at E. ON or will have to do, the connection procedures, the criticism was voiced that the distribution system operators of E.

ON were not that fast with regard to network access or connection procedures. Where do you think that you have some more homework to do so that this part that you were responsible for can be accelerated and could be more digital at the end of the day? The second item concerning security of supplygas fired power plants. At the beginning, you said that you were optimistic with regard to what is happening in the Ministry of Economics. But why are you hopeful in the area of gas fired power plants?

Why do you think more will happen? Up to date, we have only seen announcements and we don’t really know whether gas fired power plants will be built or decided on quickly by the end of this year. This has just been an announcement and we don’t see anything happening really. Now let me start with the gas fired power plants. I said that I am perceiving the attempt as being positive, the attempt of starting with five gigawatts first.

And I said it’s also it all depends on what we’re doing after the summer break, whether the positive indications can really be translated into action. You’re right, when you say that words are cheap, action is what counts. And that’s why we believe that gas firepower plants will definitely be needed. And it is the right thing to do to discuss this. And I don’t understand the debate in general.

Why do we have to analyze for three years whether it’s 4.1 or 14.4 or 10 gigawatts? Just start with the five gigawatts and another five gigawatts and as soon as we finish with the 10 gigawatts, we’ll have to see whether we need another 10 gigawatts. We cannot plan the future. We should just start by doing something on a step by step basis and after the first step we’ll see whether we can take the next one instead of understanding all 95 steps before you even start making the first one. And that’s why I appreciate that Ms.

Reich has said we’ll just start. Mr. Habek said 23 gigawatts, she said up to 20 gigawatts and I would say just start with the first five. We need those definitely and then we’ll see. And that also applies in other areas.

Sometimes it makes sense to first make one step and then revisit the whole decision. And that’s why we suggest that monitoring should be repeated every two years so that we can still check and verify whether our assumptions are still valid. Now with regard to grid expansion or grid connection, that was your question really, network operators or DSOs received 300,000 requests for connection. We are overwhelmed by such requests. And in those areas where we have a digital system, we can work on them in about twenty four hours.

But it doesn’t work when we are faced with bottlenecks. If we’re in a bottleneck situation, we’ll have to check what options we have for a connection because the automated systems, because this bottlenecks gives you a no answer. And because we see more and more bottlenecks, we have more and more cases in which we cannot give a quick answer. Those are the cases that will have to be worked on. And from my perspective, this is something that’s very comprehensible.

And of course, we try to help our customers give us solution to our customers as quickly as possible, although network congestion exists. It’s not always possible to give a quick answer. Thank you very much. You, Mr. Wiesemann.

Now we have questions, Nadine Boes, F. S. Reinhard Korvaleski from Rheinenge Aposte and finally, Mr. Patka from Energate. Ms.

Boes, please. Thank you very much. I have a question concerning the current debate on the feed in tariff of private solar systems, roof mounted systems. What is your opinion on Ms. Reich’s suggestion?

And we’ve also heard a lot about delayed payments. Westnets was also affected by that. How overwhelmed are you or what happened really? I would like to repeat what I said over the past months. If not now, when shall we start to work with subsidies?

And I said that for roof mounted PV systems, the main earnings are using the electricity yourself, reducing overall cost by reducing but by using the electricity that you consume. Fixed feed in accounts for just one fourth of the overall value. This won’t fall away completely, but it would be reduced. My personal opinion is that it’s right to discuss the ban or the elimination of this subsidy. And I think it’s a good idea.

If we don’t do it now, when? Do we still want to pay subsidies for technologies that don’t need subsidies for the next twenty years? It would be better if the PV industry would develop in a way that it does not need subsidies. And in my opinion, that is definitely possible. And so that’s the right debate.

And the headwind just simply has to be come to terms with. You always get headwind when something is taken away from you. In Germany, many people get a lot, and that’s why you always are faced with headwind. And now the topic on payments. Our subsidiary, Vestnets, was faced with problems.

That’s true. 200,000 connection requests were received over the past two years. And at West Nets, we have an additional problem. Our attire IT system had to be changed the meter to cash system had to be changed and additional increases of connections plus the need of changing the overall IT system led to delay, which we expressly deplore. Of course, we’ve taken counter action, additional resources and down payments given to our customers.

And we do hope that we will come to terms with this problem. But the combination of further growth plus the need of this major IT project has led to a situation where we didn’t live up to our expectations and didn’t weren’t able to deliver what our customer wanted. Next question is from Reinhard Kovalevskiy from Reinachapost. Mr. Kovalevskiy, good morning.

I understand the gas topic as follows. You’re saying that Ms. Reicher apparently wants to build a lot of gas fired power plants and that the Greens think that this is completely exaggerated. And secondly, you showed the charts on the flexibility solutions and private customers and the possibility to shift load to them. In Essenwerden, when the sun is shining, I switch on the washing machine because I think a lot of solar power is available.

It doesn’t help me financially, but it seems to make sense. Why is there no app developed by E. ON which customers can use, although they don’t have a digital meter? With this app, they could find out when it makes sense to switch on machines or appliances that are flexible. Does such an app exist?

Now as far as gas power plants are concerned, I’ve always said that I think this debate is exaggerated. We had a Green Minister of Economics who planned 20 gigawatts of hydrogen power plants, gas power plants that should be changed to hydrogen at some stage. And now we still haven’t built the first gas fired power plant, not even one. And now we’re talking about just building a few and the debate apparently believes that the whole of Germany will be covered with fossil fuels. No, let’s just make one step first and then continue with the second one.

And before we have too many fossil fuels, we’ll see what the status is. We need more pragmatism, less fewer emotions and it’s important to believe that we can’t plan all the details for the next ten years. We should be calmer, We should be more composed. That would do good. But a lack of composure is sometimes also planned because you don’t want to engage in debates that you don’t want to have.

So much for gas. Oh, the second question related to the app. It’s nice that you are adapting your load behavior, although you don’t have any commercial incentive to do so. If you were looking at the share price, you can see that you can see when you look at the spot price, what is happening. You don’t even need an app for that.

We have apps for share prices. But what you are doing without really having any personal advantage, without smart meter, can be done if you look at the wholesale spot prices. Whenever they’re negative, you should switch on your washing machine, your network would be grateful for that. Why can’t you advertise that? Well, we can only translate that into the business once a smart meter has been installed.

When we do that, we can account for your change behavior. The only thing we could advertise is you’re doing something good, but don’t have a benefit. It would be good if you do something for the system and you have financial benefit, and that’s the smart meter here that you can use for that. Flexible tariffs are being offered and are being accepted by customers. However, penetration in the market because of the low penetration of smart meters is still very low in general.

And that’s the main point of criticism. That’s why I’ve mentioned smart meters time and again. The bad rollout of smart meters in Germany has made it difficult for us to make such attractive offers to the market to a wide extent. Thank you very much for this answer. We still have three questions.

Leonard Birnbaum, CEO, E.ON: Mr. Butker from Enagade, Mr. Driesen from Opel and Ms. Brendel from Bloomberg. Mr.

Butker first please. Good morning. Hello and good morning, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask some questions. I’d like to keep my camera switched off, so I don’t use as much bandwidth. And I’d like to come back to the investment topic.

Mr. Birenbaum, back in February, you said that E. ON’s investment for the regulatory period from 2029 onwards cannot be judged at all because you don’t know what the environmental regulatory environment will look like. And that’s an important variable for investments. Now, we’ve moved on half a year.

And I would like to know whether anything has already changed from your perspective or whether anything has transpired that would cause you to look at your investment budget once again? Or can you only really say what kind of investments you want to make after the decisions have been made by the agency? Okay, maybe I can answer that. One, you have rightly said that at the moment we are in the consultation phase. What we said for the full year was that we would first of all wait for the finalization of this consultation process and look at the draft decisions or the final decisions which we expect by the end of the year if the regulators ticks to that his timetable.

And once we’ve seen those and once all of this has happened, we can comment for the full year 2025 in February 2026. What we can say at the moment is based on well, we need certain visibility as to what the future regulatory system will look like. We haven’t got enough visibility as yet to be able to say how we can invest from 2029 onwards. Thank you. Mr.

Dreesen from Montel, please. Good morning, everyone. Quick question concerning network connections. You mentioned the data centers earlier that need to be connected as well. Now there are first attempts in some areas to use repetition and to subdivide the capacities, the scarce capacities.

And that means that big utilizers may go elsewhere because they do not get enough capacity. So what’s your take on that, the scarcity? Very good question. The answer is, well, we cannot provide a blanket answer here. We have certain focus regions where the situation is very tight, particularly in the Frankfurt area.

In that area, we have almost any number of data center requests, which we cannot fulfill in the near term. As I said in my speech, at the moment, we have outstanding requests of some 50 gigawatts, more than 400 requests in total. So you can calculate what the average is, so two fifty megawatts per request. So that shows that we are receiving massive requests. At the moment, we have 50 data center projects, which we are connecting with a total of five gigawatts, so on average 100 megawatts.

So the tail end is becoming bigger and more. So there are two problems here. One is, can I administer this situation and give everyone five megawatts? That will not help anyone. So the question is, do I give everything to the first requester?

Then that first person could actually demand the capacity without actually using it. So we need to think about queue management. Who’s turn is it and in which sequence? And how can we ensure that somebody simply profits from the network capacity being scarce? The important thing is that you have to pay for securing options.

If it’s cheap to fill the queue, then that is exactly what would happen. Then there will be a lot of speculation. It’s a very difficult subject to handle. We are trying it as best we can. But I think the solution that’s being discussed that everyone will get a little is that will probably mean that nobody can really be helped.

We need more intelligent answers, more intelligent solutions within the industry and also discuss them with politicians and the regulator. Thank you for the question and the answer. We have one last question LAURENT:] here

Moderator, E.ON: in the system. That’s Eva Brando from Bloomberg. Ms. Brando, good morning.

Leonard Birnbaum, CEO, E.ON: Hello and thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask my question. I have a situation or question concerning the current situation. We see a lot of heat in some European countries, which means the electricity demand goes up. Do you believe that the increasing demand because of air conditioning systems is kind of overlooked at the moment? Yes, we are seeing more penetration of air conditioning systems in Germany.

We started off at a lower level. There are other countries with a much higher level, but we don’t see it in power consumption yet. When we look at power consumption, the forecasts are two percent to 3% growth by the end of the decade. Part of that will be air conditioning systems. But when we look at the overall development of electricity demand in the grid, we can’t see that at the moment.

Maybe the weak economic development seems to overcompensate all other effects. So the answer is it will happen, but it’s not visible as yet. And we of course have the advantage that have solar production, PV production. But it’s more difficult in the winter when there’s no wind and no sun and more energy is needed for heating. That would be more of an issue going forward, providing electricity for heat pumps.

And as Leon said, the gas fired generation will be needed for these periods to ensure systems stability. Air conditioning systems are very friendly in a system that has a lot of PV. Thank you for the extensive explanations and thank you, Ms. Brandl, for the last question. We have no further questions in the system, which means we can finish even before 11:00.

Thank you to the two of you for your answers and thank you to you out there for taking part. The press team will of course be available to any further questions you may have during the rest of the day. So it’s goodbye from Essen. Thank you.

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