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National Grid PLC on Thursday raised its half-year dividend by 6% on a rebased basis, despite pouring money into capital investment and reporting a halved interim profit.
National Grid is a London-based electricity transmission and distribution provider in the UK and the north east US and is the UK electricity system operator.
It said pretax profit fell by 50% to £684 million in the six months that ended September 30 from £1.37 billion a year before, as revenue declined by 6.2% to £7.96 billion from £8.49 billion.
National Grid said the decline in profit and revenue related to timing movements in its role as electricity system operator in the UK. Operating result in this segment swung to a £213 million loss in the recent six months from a £443 million profit a year before.
On an underlying basis, pretax profit rose 26% to £1.44 billion from £1.14 billion, while operating profit was up 14% to £2.05 billion from £1.80 billion.
National Grid declared an interim dividend of 15.84 pence, down 18% from 19.40p a year before. However, taking into account the new shares from the company’s recent £7 billion right issue, the 15.84p payout was up 5.7% from a rebased 14.98p.
The shareholder payout comes amid a £60 billion investment programme over five years. In the first half alone, National Grid said capital investment totalled £4.6 billion, up 17% from £3.95 billion a year before. It said financial 2025 capital investment will be about £10 billion.
‘Over the last six months, the exciting momentum within National Grid has continued as we deliver an unprecedented step up in capital investment,’ said Chief Executive John Pettigrew.
He added: ‘In the UK, work on our 17 major onshore and offshore transmission projects is moving forward, in consultation with our communities and stakeholders, and we are well progressed in securing the supply chain for all these projects. In the US, we’ve made good progress on our $4 billion ’upstate upgrade’ in New York, and delivered further gas mains replacement and network reinforcement across our communities.’
National Grid shares were up 0.5% to 988.40 pence early Thursday in London. The wider FTSE 100 index was up 0.1%.
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