Voltalia’s 2024 could suffer from curtailments in Brazil

French renewable power plants operator Voltalia SA (EPA:VLTSA) on Monday warned that ongoing power curtailments in Brazil could have a strong impact on its full-year earnings and announced a series of measures to tackle the issue.

The company explained it had undertaken a series of actions to lower the effect of curtailments, which are taking place in certain parts of the Brazilian transmission system network. If those actions are extended over the coming months and no financial compensation is offered, the impact on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in 2024 is seen to be EUR 40 million (USD 44.4m).

A group of electricity producers including Paris-based Voltalia is continuing with certain litigation actions and in parallel is holding "constructive discussions" with the network operator and public authorities. The goal is to obtain financial compensation and lower the duration of the current capping of production.

The ongoing legal cases were launched last year because the Brazilian operator started capping "an unusually high part of production to minimise the risks of instability" following a blackout that occured in August.

According to Voltalia, its production curtailment volume in the northeast of the grid could be high for several months due to the delayed construction of new transmission lines in the region.

Expressing confidence about the finding of technical and financial solutions, Voltalia confirmed its 2027 goal for normalised EBITDA of around EUR 475 million.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.110)

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