Friday 25 February 2011

What would Gordon do? {2}


Need a good lines for Dave, Nick, Vince or the Tory-Led coalition in general.
Picture Links and slogans in the comments and we'll post them up.
{family friendly only!}

4 comments:

Miss S-J said...

They're both thinking

"Hope he's not going to ask for another favour."

rwendland said...

ND You mention France, which is a good excuse to slide off into my favourite topic! EDF et al.

Have you studied the 2010 EDF full results. They look a pretty sorry story to me - worth an article?

Nuclear Engineering International have done an analysis. They say the French nuclear generation business contributed only EUR 778m of the total EUR 16.6 billion EBITDA. That's pretty shocking low before finance costs. Finance charges are EUR 4.4 billion, which suggests the finance-heavy nuclear generation side of the business must have large losses - amazing since the French government financed the old nuclear plant so EDF finance charges are less than the should be.

I'm still puzzled where EDF think they are going to raise the finance for the UK new nucs.

I see EDF is paying 5.1% on a 40 year GBP 1 billion bond to 2050, and 4.5% on 30 year EUR bonds. (page 89 financial statement) Selling UK distribution net & EnBW gains EUR14 billion off balance sheet 2010/11, but 2010 non-recurring items costs €2.9bn. Doesn't look like they could use a discount rate less than 8% in the investment justification spreadsheets - with a low gas price near-future I doubt that will work for non-political nuclear investment.

It all looks a bit of a worrying mess to me, being held together but for how long? Would be interested in a more expert view!

NEI also has a translation (better) of Nuclear Policy Council Roussely goals statement. It sounds a touch desperate, especially the bit about co-operating on the Chinese "Gen-III medium-power reactor (1000MW)". This sounds like the ACPR-1000, where the Chinese aim is to get rid of all the French IPR components so they can export it easily.

NB flicking thru the accounts could not find where NEI got the French nuclear generation EUR 778m number from.

rwendland said...

... damn. Meant to post that in ND's "6 Nations: Those Rugby Songs Again" thread. Sorry Bill Quango.

Nick Drew said...

Mr W - will certainly take a look next week, but cynic that I am, will find it hard to take the numbers at face value: continental European financial reporting standards are really dodgy (I could give you some specific examples, but not in public)

for example, I wouldn't expect to be able to trust any breakdown of revenues or profits into particular business-units: intra-company transfer-pricing is so easy to massage

also, in the nuke business, there is huge scope for manipulating the accounting treatment of long-term liabilities ...