11/11/2020

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to E.ON's Q3 2020 results conference call. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and after the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Verena Nikolaou-Kronberg, who will start today's conference. Please go ahead.

speaker
Verena Nikolaou-Kronberg
Head of Investor Relations

Anything. Analysts and investors, welcome to our Q3 results presentation. I'm here with Mark today, who will briefly guide you through the key topics. Afterwards, we are happy to answer any questions. With that, over to you, Mark.

speaker
Mark
CFO

Yeah, thank you, Verena, for the crisp introduction, and I will try to keep it equally crisp. Good morning and a warm welcome from my side. During this third quarter, we have achieved a very strong operational performance throughout all our businesses. This gives us a lot of confidence for the remainder of the year. We maintain our full year outlook 2020, despite an intensified COVID situation across our markets. We likewise confirm our mid-term targets, including our dividend commitment. What makes us so confident in the current situation? To start with, we now have ticked off all boxes relating to the integration of energy, which is actually beyond our own expectations. We have closed all remedy transactions with the sale of energy's check retail activities. To remind you, proceeds from remedy disposals amount to around 1 billion euro. This is more not only with regard to what you could expect in a pandemic situation, but even in a normal market environment. All the money is now in our bank accounts, Reporting wise, the bulk of it will be recorded on the balance sheet with our Q4 numbers. Further steps to integration included the successful rebranding in Germany. Two and a half million customers which were supplied under the energy brand are now happy Aeon customers. We managed this process without any material impact on churn. We have now also effectively merged the energy headquarter onto the Aeon platform. Against this background, I am happy to confirm our synergy target for 2020 of €120 million, as well as our total target of around €740 million by 2022 and around €780 million by 2024. In addition, the far-reaching IT renewal programs both in Germany and the UK keep on running smoothly. This week, we just surpassed the level of 1 million accounts migrated on the new platform in the UK, and we are also progressing with the migration of our German customers according to plan. Finally, the recently applied selective lockdown measures in various E.ON countries are not expected to have a significant impact on our performance and hence our full-year financials. In a nutshell, the energy integration has been successfully concluded. continue to see a strong resilience of the business in the context of the current pandemic. And there is even further upside from the European recovery program, which I will explain on the next slide. As we have already said earlier this year, we are currently assessing the opportunities for E.ON from the EU recovery program. Out of the total 750 billion euro funding, around 60 billion within the recovery and resilience facility, are earmarked for expenditures related to climate across the E.ON markets and which can be directed towards the energy industry. Within the areas that member states should address for EU funding, there is a list of potential investments that are focused on the green and digital transition. Most of these activities are matching the investment opportunities within our customer-centric energy infrastructure activities. On that basis, we see ourselves well positioned to access government funding with keeping our own capex level at least as planned. We already have identified 200 projects for execution representing a potential volume of several billion euros. To be on top of the process, we have set up a dedicated team to evaluate a project portfolio based on the criteria within the EU funding framework which is still under negotiation until the end of the year. We've engaged at EU level and in our market units early on after the historical agreement in the EU Council. In close collaboration with our local units, we are coordinating to follow up the initial positioning of key priority investments, such as in smart grids, heating and cooling, e-mobility and hydrogen, and in the next step, to place concrete projects in the pipeline across the member states. It is up to each member state now to define who is eligible, where and how to spend the recovery funds allocation to achieve a green reboot of the economy, something that E.ON has called for early on. And we will continue a constructive dialogue with governments to contribute to a sustainable and resilient economic recovery. Our unique positioning across the European member states is the ideal basis for maximizing the potential from the recovery program. This is backed up by our significant experience in securing EU funding already in the past. Our participation, for example, in the projects of common interest from the European Union include our smart grid initiatives across the Czech and Slovakian border or dedicated projects that are improving the security of supply in the border regions of Slovakia and Hungary. They will modernize the network, use new smart grid technologies, and improve the integration of renewable energies. With those activities, we have been able to access grants from 2020 onwards already in the magnitude of close to €200 million. Our activities on that front also support our recently increased mid-term power growth target until 2022 of 4% to 5%. Let me now move to COVID and how it affects us specifically in the third quarter and what the outlook for the remainder of the year is. With that, please turn to page four. The power demand recovery has clearly been above our expectations in the third quarter. Our main markets have been operating almost on pre-crisis levels. some even above. As a reminder, we anticipated a 5% volume decline year on year for the second half of 2020. The most recent demand data from last week shows that the selective lockdown measures taken so far during the fourth quarter will have a far less significant impact on energy demand than the previous lockdowns during spring this year. From today's perspective, The current selective lockdown measures in EON's core markets will not have a material impact on full year earnings. I can also reconfirm our confident view on the payment behavior of our customers as we do not observe any material increase in bad debt with respect to days of sales. In this context, we have only slightly increased our bad debt provisions for specific COVID reasons from the previously reported 35 million euro as of H1 to €45 million by the end of Q3. Be reminded, even though it is recorded in our earnings, this is almost entirely related to so-called expected credit loss, i.e. it has only provisional character. In fact, we have not faced any major default so far. In the UK, the level of overdue receivables is still higher than in 2019, but the overall position has stabilized during the third quarter. To proactively manage the situation, we have implemented measures such as shortening of billing cycles, offering pause of billing, or increasing late payment fees. In this context, we managed to recover already a fair share of the 100 million euro working capital increase seen as of the first half. As of Q3, this balance has consequently moved down to a level of only around 50 million euro. Of course, we still do not rule out insolvencies once governmental support schemes run out, but currently we have no indication for a significant bed debt buildup and feel comfortable with the precautionary measures that we have implemented. Now let me move to the financial performance of E.ON in the first three quarters of 2020, and with that move to page five. EBIT came in at 2.7 billion euro, which is a decline of 10% compared to the pro forma earnings of the same period last year. The reported year-on-year decline for the group is largely COVID-related. Compared to the second quarter, the negative impact from COVID has increased by about 50 million euro. The total year-to-date impact now stands at roughly 250 million euro. Adjusted for this effect, our earnings would actually have been on prior year's level. Looking at the segments, earnings in energy networks are down approximately 220 million compared to nine months last year. Roughly 120 million of that decline results from COVID-related lower volumes in our German and Central Eastern European operations. In addition, lower weather-related volumes in Germany resulted in a decrease of the operating result, which we reported already for the first quarter. Let me remind you. A decline from both COVID and weather will be almost fully recovered within the coming years. The lower Swedish WEC in the new regulatory period contributed another €100 million to the decline in the first three quarters. Our customer solutions segment is down only €40 million year-over-year, despite significant adverse weather and COVID-related effects. COVID effects in our customer solutions segment added up to roughly 130 million in the first three quarters of this year. This includes the realized loss from the survey of excess volumes at lower spot prices in the size of a high double-digit million euro amount, as well as debt debt provisions, mainly in the UK, of roughly 45 million euro, as mentioned earlier. In the UK, our bottom line was benefiting from our restructuring efforts despite our ongoing customer migration that obviously weighs on the profitability. Be reminded that especially in the UK, the seasonality is usually very pronounced towards the beginning of the year. For that reason, we expect the fourth quarter to be negative in absolute terms with regard to the operating results line. Nine-month earnings of our non-core businesses are slightly down year-over-year. The increased contribution from our nuclear operations resulting from higher hedge prices was compensated by negative effects from the purchase of further production rights. The result of our Turkish upstream joint venture was negatively affected by a write-off of certain legacy projects and an adverse FX development. Let us have a brief look at what the earnings development means for our bottom line. Our adjusted net income came in at around 1.1 billion for the first three quarters of 2020, down 15% versus pro forma 2019, reflecting the decrease in our operating results. Economic interest results and income tax rates are fully in line with our communicated expectations. Let me now turn to the development of our economic net debt. Compared to the first half of this year, economic net debt improved by roughly €1 billion to around €42 billion at the end of the first nine months. As highlighted during our H1 communication, the improvement is largely due to a very strong operating cash flow. As per the third quarter, the cash conversion rate improved to 87%. Relative to the first half, we have seen a significant recovery in our working capital by more than 2.5 billion euros. And this is in line with the seasonal expectation which we expressed as of H1 stage. On the back of this rebound, our net financial position is now back on first quarter levels as we indicated. Pension provisions increased again by roughly 600 million euros since the third half as a result of an increase in the defined benefit obligations in line with a further meaningful decrease in pension discount rates of 20 basis points in Germany. The performance of our asset portfolio in the third quarter was not able to compensate for the increase in the defined benefit obligations. For the remainder of the year, we expect a continuing strong operating cash flow. The closing of the sale of Energy's Czech retail operations will further improve our economic net debt position. We currently anticipate a level comparable to the first quarter, leaving aside any movements in our pension provisions. I will conclude my presentation with our outlook on page 8. I confirm all our targets for the full year and also for our mid-term plan until 2022. The updates we have given with our H1 communication stay fully intact. Let me repeat. The current selected lockdown measures across our market are not expected to have a significant impact on the full-year financials. Be reminded that when interpreting the accumulated average growth rates, the earnings increase will be back-end loaded. This is particularly due to the regulatory cycle and the corresponding implementation timeline of synergies in our networks business. The most important element of the mid-term framework remains the dividend and our commitment to an annual dividend growth of up to 5%, which I also reiterate today. We will specify the payout for 2020 with our full year results disclosure in March next year. With these final remarks, I would like to thank you very much for your attention and hand over to Helena for the Q&A session.

speaker
Verena Nikolaou-Kronberg
Head of Investor Relations

Many thanks, Marc. We will now start with our Q&A session. Let me remind you to keep your questions crisp and limit them to two each so that everybody has the chance to raise questions. With that, over to the moderator, please.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial 02 to cancel your question. As a courtesy to the other participants, may I finally request that you limit the number of questions you ask to two at a time. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment please for the first question. And the first question is from Deepa Venkateshwaran from Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Deepa Venkateshwaran
Analyst, Bernstein

Thank you. Good morning, Mark and Verena. So my two questions is, firstly, on net debt, Mark, can I just clarify that you said you expect year end to be around Q1 level, which is around 40.2. And do you assume some recovery intention because the interest rates have recently gone up this week? So that was the first question. And secondly, on the EU recovery, Could you maybe give us a bit of color on which stage do your 200 projects get in? I mean, is it when the member states get the funds, that's when you are going to submit your projects, or are you already involved in discussions as the countries are putting their plan? So maybe some color, and specifically, I don't know if it were possible to give some ideas of projects on the customer solution side that may benefit from this. Thank you.

speaker
Mark
CFO

Good morning, Deepa. So with regard to the economic net debt, let me first talk about the things which are essentially in our hands, which is the net financial position. Here we clearly expect that we will at least keep a little as of Q3. Actually, if you look at our numbers, you should expect that our net financial position will further decrease towards the year end. The second part, the pension provisions, obviously is hard not to forecast. If I look today at interest rates, asset performance, the situation has already improved. This is why essentially I would not take out the development of pension provisions from any guidance as it would be pretty much the mark to market on December 31st. So what you can build on in your modeling clearly is that we will drive our net financial position further down. And with our payment provisions, you should not get too distracted from quarterly ups and downs, as I say, 20 to 30-year duration liability. So I always say try to look through that one quarter. It doesn't do the trick here. Your recovery programs. I think the message we want to convey is that in the markets where we operate, and that is Germany, that is Poland, that is Italy, it's the Scandinavian countries, we are actively engaging with the government. But you should also take note that we will not participate in this kind of bingo, which seems to be going on, that everyone raises their hands in order to be seen to have some project somewhere. There's very tangible and solid discussions going on in the various member states how these projects will qualify for the various national schemes, and we will do our job here to make sure that those projects that we feel that they are appropriate both from a public but also from our corporate angle, find their way into these support funds. Potential is meaningful, but we do not expect to have tangible results before end of first quarter or actually second quarter next year.

speaker
Deepa Venkateshwaran
Analyst, Bernstein

Okay, thank you. You're welcome.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from Peter Buschdigger, BIA Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Peter Buschdigger
Analyst, BIA Securities

Yeah, good morning. So two questions from me. On your earnings guidance, could you just sort of tell us where you think you're trending to in terms of, you know, are you heading towards the middle end of the range at the moment and what are the sort of remaining uncertainties for, I guess, the last sort of, you know, seven weeks or so, seven or eight weeks of the year? And then back to this EU recovery fund, what do you think the balance sheet, or rather I'd like to ask, what will the balance sheet implications be? So do you expect the funding to be grants or loans? And do you expect to get those upfront or during the project or at the end of a project? Any kind of color there would be helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Mark
CFO

Good morning, Peter. So on the EU recovery funds, it's very good question and I should probably differentiate a bit how we also came to the number of 60 billion euro potential because from the 750 billion headline numbers which the EU communicated we in the first step actually deduct loads so we are only looking at the potential which is related to grants And then kind of we took off all those countries where essentially we do not have meaningful operations. So we focus on our core markets. And so the 60 billion euro is the potential with regards to grants in the core markets in which we operate. And for those we will then in specific projects which will essentially be focused around our non-regulated infrastructure solution business, as we feel fully compatible with our investment and in order to let it as it anyhow and would not seek any specific support on that side, beyond those projects which I mentioned, which are part of other EU support schemes. With regard to earnings guidance, at this stage, the key risks are twofold, although the last weeks with regard to COVID have been reassuring. So, for example, in Germany during the last week, we haven't seen any material impact on demand since the second selected lockdown started. Nevertheless, COVID remains one of the key risks, and the other main risk I would mention is weather. So whether it's going to be a wild or a stronger winter will have an impact on our results as well. This is why at this stage I would not now narrow down the guidance range or give any indication whether it's the upper or the lower end. Usually this means look at the midpoint. This is all what I can say.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And the next question is from Alberto Gandolfi, Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Alberto Gandolfi
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you. Good morning, Mark and Verena. Thanks for taking my two questions. First one is on dividends. Considering that your guidance is up to 5% growth, I was wondering, considering this year earnings are down and your deleveraging is mostly going to take place in the next couple of years, wondering if we should be assuming that this year perhaps no dividend growth or very low and then maxing out the next couple of years when actually the earnings are going to support it more. So I was just trying to think if we can profile the dividend growth a bit more. And in the second question, you're talking about a growing addressable market, partly in customer solutions, and perhaps you're going to have cheap financing or grants. But you may have to upgrade investments as well. And definitely you would have more investments in the networks. So wondering if considering the positive escalation in the addressable market when it comes to electrification, decarbonization, how should we think about your ability to square more investments, deleveraging dividends, what would you prioritize? And would you be open to follow some of your competitors issuing maybe more hybrids? Should we think more disposals? Should we think even potentially other capital measures? And it would be very great if we could know the way you're thinking about it. Thank you so much.

speaker
Mark
CFO

Yeah. Hi, Alberto. Thanks for your questions. I think we forgot both questions. I'm happy to profile and reaffirm the messages which we have already given. That means for the dividend, we've talked about dividend growth of up to 5%. So what our investors can definitely count on that the dividend will every year in the future grow. This is our clear commitment and ambition. And by how much it will grow relative to the dividend of 46 cents last year, we will communicate, as I said, with our results released in March. And in that sense, full reconfirmation of what we had communicated before. Also with regard to our networks plan, we've been very clear that we will be focusing on growing organically our asset base. while at the same point in time pursuing the leveraging plan, which will be building on realizing the full potential of synergies, further improving the performance of our businesses via digitalization. You have heard the successful closing with regard to the remedy disposals. We talked about our working capital measures. And as you said, it takes a couple of years in the British sense. I think 2021 will be the year where we implement all that stuff. And this is why at this stage there's no reason for us to think or speculate any further. We are focused on delivering the plans which we put out and are very confident around that.

speaker
Alberto Gandolfi
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you so much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from . Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Sam
Analyst

Hi. Good morning, Mark and everybody. Thank you for the presentation and good results today. I just have two questions. The first is on the PPL assets for sale in the UK, which I think we spoke about briefly on a previous call. I just wonder if you're able to confirm at this point if you're still involved in the process there or if that's something you can now rule out. And the second question, which, Mark, may be a bit unfair to ask you, but I've been getting this question from clients, so I wanted to give you a chance to tell us whatever you can. But some people are noticing that Johannes' term as CEO runs to next year and asking if he's likely to extend beyond next year or if there is a succession plan internally that's being discussed. So I'm just wondering if there's anything you could say there to help us think about leadership going forward. Thank you.

speaker
Mark
CFO

Hi, Sam. With regard to PPL, I can only reiterate what we said last time, and that is actually that we do not comment at all on M&A transactions publicly, and that has proven, I think, widely a reasonable attitude to this. What I can nevertheless maybe a bit more generally when it comes to M&A stress is that on the one side obviously M&A will play a certain role in the development of our portfolio going forward. But I would also like to remind that when we talk about such transactions and specifically when it should come to bigger transactions, that there are some key principles in the sense they need to be value accretive. Value accretive typically in the energy industry means that there are tangible synergies that typically cause for a geographical adjacency and it also means that we want to have a good knowledge with regard to the geographies and the regulations in place. And in that context, we would also very carefully generally weigh the country risk at any given point in time with regard to a major investment. I think that is some general comments so that you more generally can assess how likely or not it would be that we engage in any specific asset transaction. With regard to your client question, You know that questions of board succession are under the realm of the supervisory board, and you can rest assured that our supervisory board, as usual, does a very professional job. It would be highly unprofessional if I was not the speaker for our supervisory board spontaneously in a results call. So if there is something to communicate around that, that will be done at the appropriate point in time.

speaker
Sam
Analyst

Okay, well, I guess I can't argue with that on the second question, but thank you for a helpful answer on the first one. Thanks very much.

speaker
Mark
CFO

You're welcome.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from John Musk, RBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
John Musk
Analyst, RBC

Yes, good morning, everyone. Two questions from me on the customer solutions business. Firstly, just customer numbers, really. You've obviously... had a better result in the UK with some of your operational improvements. But how are the customer numbers trending there and then also in Germany, your other main market? And then secondly, in the UK specifically with the new billing systems and the NPower merger, how are you in terms of the – movement of customers onto the new billing system. You mentioned overall what's happening, but specifically in the UK, how has that transfer gone? And sorry, finally, within that UK business, when does the Empower brand disappear?

speaker
Mark
CFO

Yeah, John, welcome. Maybe I'll start with UK. I think the UK market provided us with quite some challenges and difficulties during the past years. We decided to only bank on self-help measures and I'm very happy to be able to tell you that with the measures we have taken and which our management team in the UK is rigorously pursuing, we are actually on a very good track. Not only that the migration, as I said, is progressing fully in line with time, we have already migrated successfully 1 million accounts onto the new platform. And with that, are reconfirming also our timeline that during the first half of next year, we will have migrated all B2C and SME customers onto the new platform. And with that, we are also then in time with the restructuring, which makes the migration obviously the second key challenge for the business. So we are also in time then to wind down the NPower operations by the end of next year, essentially, and with that then drive out all costs related with NPower. With regard to the brand, there is an INC business, which we've also taken over from NPower. We said that we are laying the cards for that. We'll first focus on also integrating that, but for the time being, we would maintain the brand for the INC customers in the market. So we've got the brand that may stay for a select group of customers, but I think that should not be of a great matter for you. So overall, very promising steps forward in the UK. With regard to the customer numbers, let me then also start with the UK. Here, the customer number development is reflecting what I've just talked about. We are driving down the NPower operation with that we also stopped any customer acquisitions in the B2C area under the NPower brand beginning of this year. This is why the NPower customers are trending down as expected. On the other side, our E.ON brand If I adjust it kind of for the migration effect, as we're obviously gaining customers under the E.ON Next brand now from the migration, if I adjust for that migration, our core E.ON brand is performing very solidly. Bottom line, that means for the UK, our customer numbers combined are slightly going down, about 200,000 accounts, but this is exclusively due to NPower. For all other markets, our customer numbers are actually going up. In Germany, we've been able to add about 100,000 customers so far this year. That against the background also of migrating 2.5 million customers onto the Yonbra, and I think that's quite a strong performance. And also for the other markets, they're performing very solidly, i.e. readily increasing our customer accounts.

speaker
John Musk
Analyst, RBC

I hope... Yeah, that's all very helpful. ...questions. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And the next question is from James Brand, Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
James Brand
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Hello. Good morning. Thanks for the presentation and for taking the questions. I also had two questions related to developments over the next year or two. The first one is on the networks business, and you highlighted in the presentation that the growth there might be back-end loaded over the next couple of years with synergies coming through more in 2022. When I speak to clients, one of the key kind of uncertainties that sometimes gets expressed is whether that growth will come through in 2022 or not, particularly given that it is back-end loaded and it seems to hinge on the synergies in the networks business. So I guess the key question there is, How confident are you in delivering the synergies in the networks business? Has all the areas in which you are looking to generate synergies been identified already? If so, I guess that should give us more confidence in that growth coming through in 2022. And then the second question is a bit of a follow-up, I guess, from the last questions asked by John. But I think you've said in the past that you aim for breakeven from the energy retail business in 2021, given that your answers to the prior question around fully kind of winding that down by the end of next year, should we be maybe thinking about some remaining losses in that business in 2021, but then getting to break even, I guess, by definition if it's closed, but getting all those losses fully eliminated in 2022 now, would that be a reasonable expectation? Thank you.

speaker
Mark
CFO

With regard to the networks questions, I would like to remind you that we have been very consistent since the announcement of the transaction that the realization of the synergies in energy networks will be back and loaded. So it has been very consistent for years. And I'm equally confident as we have been consistent that we will deliver those synergies in 2022. So in that sense, 100% reassurance for any existing or potential investor that those synergies will be delivered. With regard to the break-even in the UK, it's indeed, as you described, the NPower B2C operation will be wound down by the end of next year. And hence, there will be some minor expenses next year. But then the operations will be closed. no negative or positive earnings contribution. At the same point in time, I would like to stress again that we have been successfully migrating 1 million of NPower accounts onto our new platform. That platform is showing a remarkably positive performance, actually beyond our expectations at this stage. So with that, we are very confident to dramatically improve our cost base in the UK. We also reminded that we took the decision to move our entire Aeon B2C business onto that new platform, so there will be another lack of efficiencies coming from a significant restructuring on the Aeon UK B2C side. And all put together means that also with regard to that break-even of NPower and the the improvements of the situation in the UK. We are very confident, as again, that is only based on self-help measures. We are not banking on any improvement from the regulator or the market environment. But as always, I would like to stress that still that environment, on which we don't think that it would improve, I still regard it as not sustainable. And we also continue to work with authorities in the UK to make sure that the market framework will improve going forward. Again, we're not banking on that in terms of our own profitability assessment.

speaker
James Brand
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Great. Thank you very much.

speaker
Mark
CFO

You're welcome.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And the next question is from Rob Pullum, Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Rob Pullum
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. Good morning. I think most of the things I was going to ask have already happened. So I'll just ask one sort of looking ahead. So hypothetically, into the start of next year, if the current stage of, shall we say, lockdowns and restrictions relating to COVID continue across the countries you're involved in, could we expect to see an impact in 1Q or 1H numbers for 2021? If you could maybe put a little bit of color around that, particularly given, of course, government support regimes may start to be rolled back in that period. Thank you very much.

speaker
Mark
CFO

Rob, overall, do we expect some spillover into 2021? Yes. I'm pretty sure that it will be limited in the context of our numbers. But then to more specifically now speculate around that at this stage I think wouldn't help anyone. So what we can observe is that the current lockdowns have a limited impact on demand. We will continually monitor that, and then with our March results released, obviously present our view on 21, but I would be highly surprised if that has a material impact in the context of our group numbers.

speaker
Rob Pullum
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Fair enough. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And the next question is from . Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Unknown Analyst
Analyst

Good morning, everybody. I have two questions, please. So the first one is on the UK again. There was some article that you started negotiations with the trade unions over restructuring of the business. Can this process pose any risk to your target, and can you shed any light on what restructuring numbers you're talking about if this is not too sensitive? I've seen also you offered energy bondholders a transfer of this 11.5 billion bonds to E.ON. I remember that it was consolidated. As you started to consolidate energy, they were marked up to the market value, but yet you adjusted your economic net debt. Can this transaction on the accounting-wise have any impact on the way you treat these bonds for the purpose of net debt calculation? That's just a technical change of guarantor. Thank you.

speaker
Mark
CFO

The way how we technically hand this will not change. I can answer straight away. And with regard to the UK, We are in very constructive – continue to be in constructive discussions with the union, so we won't see a particular risk there. We have managed to achieve our cost-saving targets in the past without any major disruption from the union side. It is nevertheless a massive restructuring. As of today, we still employ around 14,000 employees in the UK overall. Of that, 4,500 are to build to NPower. The bulk part of those employees, by the end of next year, will leave. As we close down the NPower B2C operations and on the E.ON UK side of the slightly more than 9,000, we do talk about up to 3,500 roles which will be affected by the migration and in the context of that restructuring of our B2C operations on the E.ON side as well. So the restructuring is massive, but so far we have managed that without any interruption or disruption, and you can bank on that this will continue this way.

speaker
Unknown Analyst
Analyst

So just a quick follow-up so I get the numbers right. So how many people are you targeting at the end in the whole structure in the new operations from 2022, let's say?

speaker
Mark
CFO

I think target structure... Dimensionally, it will be around 6,000.

speaker
Unknown Analyst
Analyst

Dimensionally. Okay. Yeah, that's big. Thank you very much.

speaker
Unknown

Yeah, okay.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And this concludes today's Q&A session, and I hand back to the speakers for closing remarks.

speaker
Verena Nikolaou-Kronberg
Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, many thanks for your continuous interest in E.ON. Obviously, the IR team is more than happy to answer any follow-up questions that you might have. Other than that, we will at least see each other online, hear each other in coming up roadshows and conferences. And, yeah, thank you very much, and stay healthy.

speaker
Mark
CFO

Thanks also very much, Sai. Have a nice day. Stay healthy. Bye.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect now.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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