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Tauron PE SATauron power expects group's CAPEX to increase gradually
Listed power utility Tauron which wants to spend PLN 100 billion (EUR 23.5 bln) on investments by 2035, anticipates that capital expenditures will increase gradually in the following years, the company representatives told a press briefing.
"This will be staggered, gradually increasing, both in distribution but also in RES," said Tauron's deputy CEO Krzysztof Surma.
"Investment has cooled over the last few years, a lot of contractors have gone out of business. We need to rebuild the market. We need this year and next year to build the market of service providers. Each year, the dynamics will be higher," the group's CEO Grzegorz Lot added.
Tauron assumes a PLN 100 billion (EUR 23.5 bln) in CAPEX between 2024 and 2035. The group said that 60 percent of the expenditure is to be for the development and modernisation of the distribution network, while 30 percent is to be allocated to RES and electricity storage.
According to the deputy CEO Krzysztof Surma, the group's net debt to EBITDA ratio will not exceed 3.5x in any year of the strategy.
Tauron assumes in its new strategy until 2035 that the start of dividend payments from the company's profit will take place after 2028. In the first year, Tauron wants to pay a dividend of PLN 0.50 (EUR 0.12) per share, and by 2035, the dividend is expected to increase to PLN 0.70 (EUR 0.16) per share.
When asked why the dividend would be paid after 2028, Surma said: "We wanted to appreciate investors, we thought about when, there were long discussions".
"It's partly correlated with our shift away from coal, but it's not dependent. It's easier to raise capital when we are heavily decarbonised and that's how we came out of the cash flow," he added.
pel/ ao/