Vattenfall
 |
|
| Government enterprise | |
| Industry | Electric utility |
| Founded | 1909 as Kungliga Vattenfallsstyrelsen |
| Headquarters | , Sweden |
|
Key people
|
Magnus Hall (President and CEO) |
| Products | Electricity generation, transmission and sales |
| Revenue |
 171.7 billion kr (2013) |
|
-6.4 billion kr (2013) |
|
|
-13.5 billion kr (2013) |
|
|
Number of employees
|
31,819 FTE (2013) |
| Subsidiaries | Nuon Energy (67%) |
| Website | www |
Vattenfall is a Swedish power company, wholly owned by the Swedish government. Beyond Sweden, the company generates power in Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom. In January 2016, Vattenfall announced that all its Swedish nuclear power plants, including the newer reactors, were operating at a loss due to low electricity prices and Sweden's nuclear output tax. It warned that it may be forced to shut all the nuclear plants down, and argued that the nuclear output tax should be scrapped.
The company's name is Swedish for "waterfall", and is an abbreviation of its original name, Royal Waterfall Board (Kungliga Vattenfallstyrelsen).
Vattenfall (then called Kungliga Vattenfallsstyrelsen or Royal Waterfall Board) was founded in 1909 as a state-owned enterprise in Sweden. From its founding until the mid-1970s, Vattenfall's business was largely restricted to Sweden, with a focus on hydroelectric power generation. Only in 1974 did the company begin to build nuclear reactors in Sweden (the Ringhals 1 and 2 reactors), eventually owning seven of Sweden's 12 reactors. In 1992, Vattenfall was reformed as the limited liability company Vattenfall AB.
In the years 1990 through 2009, Vattenfall expanded considerably (especially into Germany, Poland and the Netherlands), acquiring stakes in Hämeen Sähkö (1996), HEW (1999, 25.1% stake from the city of Hamburg), the Polish heat production company EW (2000, 55% stake), Elsam A/S (2005, 35.3% stake), and Nuon (2009, 49% stake). In 2002 Vattenfall AB and its acquisitions were incorporated as Vattenfall Europe AG, making it the third-largest electricity producer in Germany.
Following the expansion period, Vattenfall started to divest parts of its business in Denmark and Poland during the years following 2009 in a strategy to focus on three core markets: Sweden, Netherlands, and Germany. Write-downs on coal-fired and nuclear power plant assets in Germany and gas power plants in the Netherlands were necessary in a difficult market environment with increasing renewable energy market share and due to the German Nuclear power phase-out decision of 2011. In summer 2013 Vattenfall announced a writedown off the value of its assets by 29.7 billion SEK (4.6 billion USD). A major part of these write-offs were attributed to Nuon Energy NV, a Netherlands-based utility that Vattenfall purchased at a 97 billion SEK (ca. 15 billion USD) price in 2009, but whose values was depreciating by 15 billion SEK (ca. 2 billion USD) since. The gloomy market outlook of decreasing power prices in combination with increasing risks notably on the contintental market prompted the board to revise the group strategy by splitting its organizational structure into a Nordic part and a part with operations in continental Europe and the United Kingdom as of 2014. Some analysts have perceived this strategic review as a precursor to a partial retreat from continental European activities with a shift of focus towards activities in the Scandinavian market. In this context and in response to a local referendum on re-municipilization of distribution grids, Vattenfall agreed on the sale of company-owned electricity and district-heat grids in Hamburg to the City of Hamburg in early 2014. In each of the second quarters of 2015 and 2016, Vattenfall filed impairments of SEK 28 billion, mostly due to lignite power stations in Germany. Operational financials were satisfactory.
...
Wikipedia