MILAN (Reuters) -Italy’s biggest utility Enel said a windfall tax on energy companies that Spain was planning was “illegitimate” and it could challenge the move in court.
Enel, which controls listed Spanish utility Endesa, revised down its guidance for 2022 ordinary net income on Thursday on the back of more cautious expectations on its Italian business.
The new guidance also includes a 300 million euro potential hit from the new taxation, Enel Chief Financial Officer Alberto De Paoli told analysts in a post-results conference call.
“We will keep monitoring the parliamentary process (in Spain)… in order to assess possible litigation actions when the regulation is approved,” De Paoli said.
“We consider the taxation contrary to the provisions of the European Union’s regulations,” he said, adding it was illegitimate.
The group’s ordinary net income fell by 9.5% year-on-year to 3 billion euros between January and September as high commodity prices took a toll on the group’s retail business, in particular in Italy, the company said.
The company now sees net income of between 5.0 and 5.3 billion euros this year, against an earlier forecast of 5.6-5.8 billion.
It left its EBITDA guidance unchanged and said it would pay a dividend of 0.40 euros per share this year.
Net debt to end-September increased to 69.7 billion euros from 62.2 billion euros at the end of June but the group is confident it would fall to between 58 and 62 billion euros by the end of this year.
Enel will present its 2023-2025 plan on Nov. 22 and will update investors about potential new disposals in Latin America and elsewhere, De Paoli said.
(Reporting by Francesca Landini and Keith Weir; editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
