Finding EnergyAustralia partner ‘takes time’: CLP CEO

afr.com:

EnergyAustralia’s parent company is still in discussions with potential partners for the business after Macquarie Group walked away, but chief executive Richard Lancaster says the solution may turn out to be deals at a project level rather than for the company as a whole.

In his first comments since Macquarie last month dropped talks to potentially buy 50 per cent of EnergyAustralia, Mr Lancaster said CLP still had a good range of opportunities for taking its Australian subsidiary forward and that finding the right partner “does take some time”.

“Finding a good partner that you can work with that shares an aligned view of the future and reaching a sensible arrangement is not something that can be done in a hurry,” Mr Lancaster said on a teleconference from Hong Kong on CLP’s first-half results, which revealed another operating loss for EnergyAustralia in the first half.

EnergyAustralia MD Mark Collette says the company has emerged stronger from the 2022 energy crisis. Natalie Boog

“We are continuing to look for good partners: that doesn’t necessarily need to be at an enterprise level either, we are looking for partners in projects, at project level, and perhaps in renewable energy or storage systems.”

CLP said its Australian subsidiary posted an operating loss of $HK590 million ($115 million) in the six months to June 30, a modest improvement from its $HK726 million deficit a year earlier.

In contrast to last year’s heavy $HK8 billion loss on energy derivatives that sent the whole CLP group into the red in the June half of 2022, EnergyAustralia recorded a “slight fair value gain” for forward-sold energy contracts for the half.

In a separate statement released in Melbourne, EnergyAustralia said its earnings before