Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the analyst and investor conference call of Uniper. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. If any participants are having difficulty hearing the conference, please press star and then zero, and one of our live assistance operators will be there to assist you. May I now hand over the floor to Adam, who will start the meeting today. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Good morning, and welcome to our conference call today. Following up on yesterday's ad hoc announcement, we would like to take this opportunity and lead you through the details of our preliminary results for the first quarter of 2022 already today. The final set of numbers, including the quarterly statement and the usual full IR presentation, will be published on the third of May as scheduled. Focusing on today, our CFO, Tiina Tuomela, will guide you through the presentation. Also joining us today is our Chief Commercial Officer, Niek den Hollander, who, together with Tina, will happily take your questions in the Q&A session after the presentation. Without further ado, Tina, over to you, please.
Thank you very much, Adam. Good morning, everyone. Also from my side, a warm welcome. In a volatile market environment, flexibility is key, also when it comes to conference call. Therefore, thank you all for dialing in today on such short notice. In yesterday's evening's ad hoc release, we have announced that the operating result for the first quarter will come in significantly negative. This differs clearly not only from Uniper's historical seasonality pattern but also from what we have communicated in the last analyst call in terms of Q1 expectations. However, at the same time, we are confirming our full year outlook for fiscal year 2022. We can imagine that yesterday's announcement might have left you quite puzzled. Therefore, we felt that we need to follow up this conference call right away to provide as much transparency as possible.
Overall, adjusted group EBIT in the first quarter, according to preliminary calculation, amounts to roughly -EUR 830 million. I would like to make this very clear at the start, the main reason for negative results is an earnings shift into later quarters of 2022 stemming from our gas midstream business. Essentially, it is the outcome of conscious optimization decision that enabled us to seize market opportunities and to capture additional value while supporting the security of supply balance in Germany going forward. I will go into more detail on this topic as well as on the other earnings drivers in a minute. When it comes to Russia's war on Ukraine, we see currently a limited impact on our oper ational results. As of today, the flow from Russian gas under our existing long-term contracts remain unaffected.
We are in ongoing discussion with Gazprom regarding the implementation of the Russian Ruble decree, taking into consideration also the recent statements of the European Commission on the sanctions effect. Our view is that a payment is still permissible. It is essential for us to act in accordance with sanctions law, and we are in close contact with the German government on this matter. The first payment affected by the decree will be due end of May. When it comes to coal procurement for our power plants, we had already started to diversify our supply sources before the EU ban on Russian coal. The higher cost associated with changing our coal supply for our European generation, as well as negative effects in our Russian generation division, are the main negative impacts from the Russian crisis on our adjusted EBIT so far.
Looking at the next quarters of 2022, we see a backswing of diminished gas earnings shift and a business where the limited operational impact from Russian crisis is clearly overcompensated by strong performing flexible assets in a so far volatile market. Therefore, we overall confirm the full year outlook that we gave in February despite the unusual earnings contribution in Q1. For adjusted EBIT, we continue to guide a range between EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.3 billion. When it comes to adjusted net income, the outlook range remains at EUR 800 million-EUR 1 billion. However, we are not recording any interest income from Nord Stream 2 anymore.
With about EUR 100 million or less interest income, we expect to rather end up in the lower half of the guidance range for adjusted net income. Looking at the further preliminary financial metrics in Q1, we will most likely see an unadjusted net income around minus EUR 3 billion. Aside from the operational performance, it will reflect significant impairment losses. Aside from the already earlier announced EUR 1 billion impairment on Nord Stream 2, we expect a mid-to-high three-digit million EUR impairment on the value of our Russian generation business in Unipro. This is especially resulting from significantly increased cost of capital in the short to mid-term, which has to be applied under IFRS. The concrete amount here is subject to the outcome of the still ongoing impairment test for Q1.
Both operating cash flow as well as economic net debt are following the trend we see in operating profits. Additionally, both metrics are impacted by the backswing of measures that were taken at the end of 2021 in light of the liquidity situation back then. Optimizing liquidity and securing financial headroom remains one of our top priorities in 2022. Uniper's S&P credit rating has remained at triple B flat. However, the current risk related to a potential gas curtailment with corresponding impact on Uniper's gas business, as well as commodity prices and margining requirement, resulted in a credit watch negative. In recent weeks, we have continued to work on decreasing our margining requirements and hence, ceteris paribus, further increasing our liquidity headroom.
The net cash margining requirements have been significantly reduced from about EUR 7 billion by the end of 2021 to now roughly EUR 4.5 billion by the end of March 2022. This is the result of active margining optimization, supported by the seasonal roll-off margining position, as a large amount of hedges went into the settlement during Q1. At the end of March, we were also able to extend the governmental KfW EUR 2 billion euro credit line until April 2023. In this context, it is further helpful that the German government has recently announced a variety of financial support options for energy companies affected by the war to increase their resilience towards the extreme market movements. This clearly underlines the system relevance of companies like Uniper in the current environment.
Moving to the next slide with the most important drivers for the operating earnings development in Q1. On a year-on-year swing in adjusted EBIT amounts to more than EUR 1.5 billion at this stage. This is due to the fact that both Q1 2022 as well as prior year's Q1 showed truly remarkable results, but each with different signs. Last year's adjusted EBIT amounted to more than EUR 700 million, while this year's adjusted EBIT will come in at a negative of roughly EUR 830 million. Let's go through the main year-on-year drivers with the largest one at the end, so we can focus the further discussion there.
The first step in the waterfalls is the lower contribution from our outright business of roughly EUR 100 million due to lower achieved prices, more concretely to the lower EPADs, so-called electricity price area differentials. As you know, the Nordic electricity system is divided into different pricing zones. The supply and demand situation in each of those zones lead to different power prices, which are reflected in the EPADs, which are differentials to the overall Nordic system price. A large part of Uniper's Nordic outright portfolio, the Swedish hydro asset, is located in the SE3 Stockholm price area. Due to strict congestion issues, this pricing zone is currently facing a significant surplus overhang, which results in a pricing differential of even more than - EUR 25 per MWh compared to the overall Nordic system price.
Due to the liquidity constraints, the EPAD exposure cannot be effectively hedged in advance. Accordingly, the effects from the EPAD materialize close to or at delivery. When it comes to Q1, this was the main driver for the lower outright earnings year-over-year. Additionally, Uniper experienced an unplanned outage over nine days at our nuclear power plant, Oskarshamn, in February. The next element, the carbon phasing effect, is probably well known to you and will as usual, fully reverse in Q4. In brief, as CO2 prices increase, so do our CO2 provision during the year. Those expenditures will be offset from gains on our carbon hedges, once the hedges deals settle in Q4. The current impact from carbon phasing for the first quarter is around -EUR 200 million higher than last year, being approximately EUR 250 million in absolute terms.
The third block summarizes the development in the European fossil generation business. In total, we see around EUR 100 million of lower earnings here, which are spread across in a number of smaller effects, with the most prominent being, as expected for 2022, lower income from U.K. capacity market auctions. Also, as expected for 2022, regulatory restriction caused by the Urgenda decision in the Netherlands, effectively capping the utilization of our Maasvlakte Power Plant 3 at 35%. During the storm Eunice in February, however, also one stack at our Grain power station collapsed. Fortunately, no person got injured and the financial effect is limited. As already mentioned, in order to reduce our exposure to Russian coal, we had to revert to alternative sources of supply with higher cost and lower coal quality.
In terms of operation, we saw lower spark spread and therefore lower earnings, especially from our CCGT plants in Germany due to the high gas prices. On the positive side, higher clean dark spreads in Germany and U.K. increased Uniper's generation and therefore had a positive effect. Coming now to the largest driver. The adjusted EBIT in our gas and international commodity business came down by roughly EUR 1.2 billion, which can be split into the three main drivers. First, as we had explained in the full-year call 2021, some of the liquidity measures taken in Q4 of last year resulted in an earnings swing, i.e., margin that could have otherwise materialized in Q1 had already been anticipated in Q4. The net effect across gas midstream and international commodities amounts to roughly -EUR 200 million.
Second, the last year's Q1 was positively impacted by an extraordinary contribution from our LNG and US gas and power activities, which were benefiting from extreme market developments in Asia and the US last winter. The lack of those extraordinary results amounts to around -EUR 250 million. Finally, the most significant effect, which is basically the reason for today's update call. EUR 750 million of earnings have been shifted on the basis of our optimization decision on the back of our gas storages. Some of the most significant optimization measures were made in March, and as such, were not reflected in the earnings indication for Q1 that I gave in the February call. Let me explain to you the background and rationale of those decisions and the corresponding earnings shift on the next slide.
As you know, Uniper is actively optimizing its flexible gas assets. This means that depending on the market situation, we turn positions, i.e., we frequently buy and sell positions to capture market opportunities. This is ordinary business for our asset optimization. Given the currently high market prices, relatively small changes in the position can have quite large impact on the earnings distribution over time. Accordingly, every day optimization decision within the portfolio on how we run our assets can have quite a big impact on how earnings are distributed over time. This is what we saw in Q1 2022. Over March, gas prices came significantly down. Driven by warm weather, the gas forward curve came down even stronger in the front.
This led to a situation in which the gas spot price for deliveries in March was lower than for the sum of Q2 and Q3 delivery periods. The differential grew up to EUR 5 per MWh, as illustrated here. In order to benefit from this market constellation, Uniper changed its gas storage withdrawal strategy. About 13 TWh of gas that were priorly assumed to be withdrawn and that had been already hedged in the market were kept in storage. We were not alone, by the way. Storage withdrawals were quite low across the whole industry in the north-western Europe. By reducing the withdrawal, we could unwind the hedges in March by buying back around 13 TWh and reselling those volumes in future periods. This enabled us to effectively capture the spread between spot and forward periods in the gas market.
Based on the magnitude of the spread and the volumes, we were able to lock in a higher double-digit number of earnings for future quarters, which is ultimately supporting the fact that we can confirm our full year guidance. However, this also resulted in a big earnings swing as those 13 TWh of gas were heavily in the money due to the market price being significantly above the inventory balance sheet value. By shifting the volume, we had to forgo EUR 750 million in Q1 in order to lock in even higher earnings in future quarters. As those deals have been re-hedged, the margin is already locked in and the corresponding earnings will revert in 2022.
Aside from the commercial impact, the lower withdrawal enabled us to keep more gas in reserve going forward, which puts us in a better position when it comes to potential market disruption going forward. Moving over to the last slide today that summarize the main messages around our full year guidance. As illustrated on the left side, based on the current Q1 and our full year outlook, we expect the remaining three quarters of 2022 to accumulate roughly EUR 2 billion of adjusted EBIT. While this number might seem very high, please note that about EUR 1 billion will already resulting from back swings related to gas shift and the carbon phasing effect. This leaves us then with roughly EUR 1 billion of underlying earnings that needs to be earned over the next nine months in order to meet the full year range.
Looking at the current forecast, we see once again that Uniper's flexible portfolio is well performing in the current market environment. Among others, we see strong value materialization in the gas midstream business. Uniper's European generation business benefiting from the higher clean dark spreads with higher utilization, especially in the U.K. Favorable market conditions supporting our hydro business, especially in Germany, and as already mentioned, assuming that the operational impact from the Russian war remains limited. This brings me to the end of my presentation today. I hope I was able to provide you some clarity about our recent financial developments. Niek and I, we are ready to take your questions now.
Thank you very much, Tiina. We will open the Q&A session now. As usual, everyone, please limit yourselves to two questions each. Operator, please go ahead. We are ready now.
Thank you, sir. Okay, now Q&A session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero-one 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, your turn to speak, you can dial zero-two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Let's go ahead and start the Q&A session now. The first question of today we have from Alberto Gandolfi, Goldman Sachs. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Sir, thanks for taking the question.
Alberto, your line is. Yeah.
Yeah. Hopefully you can hear me. Thank you. Hi, it's Alberto Gandolfi with Goldman Sachs. Thanks for taking my questions. Quite a lot going on today, so apologies if I don't sign sound overly linear in the way I structure the questions, but the first one is the following. You know, we are seeing that, gas supplies to Poland are being cut off today and Bulgaria. I guess the question here is the following: How does this, if at all, impact you, do you think there's alternative routes if gas through Yamal pipeline may not be flowing? Related to this question still, are you going to comply, quote-unquote, and essentially have payment for Russian gas exit your bank account in rubles?
Are you going to settle payment in rubles or are you going to refuse the way we have seen Denmark or Poland behaving? I guess if the answer is yes, then probably I may have a follow-up. I'll stop there for the first one. The second question is on margin calls. Can you shed some light here, please, on... You mentioned a EUR 4.5 billion, but just I want to be 100% clear, please. How much are the margin calls, quote-unquote, you are out for at the moment? And any risk to financial derivatives on your balance sheet or on these margin calls, let's say, for every 10%-20% increase in gas prices?
I'm trying to understand, is there gonna be liquidity solvency question mark here from a credit perspective if there is suddenly another spike in gas prices, and how do you plan to deal with it? Thank you so much for taking the question.
Good morning, Alberto. Thank you for the question. Maybe we start with the latest news about the supply to Poland and if Niek you could elaborate our view.
Yep, sure. Happy to do so. It's not a topic of today, but then again, it's a topic of today, given it's a very recent development, so I understand the question. You will understand that we obviously don't have full insight. We've also seen in the press, I guess, what you've seen in the press. Based on that, I would say the following, specifically for Poland, how we interpret the situation is that the national oil and gas company is no longer off-taking from Gazprom because of the dispute around the ruble payment. Now, we don't exactly know what has happened, so I will not speculate on that part.
What it could mean, in case there will be no deliveries to the national oil and gas company in Poland anymore, PGNiG as we call them, that entails roughly 7 BCM, is our estimate for the remainder of the year that will not be supplied to that specific counterpart. Now, you have to realize that is a deal between that counterpart and Gazprom, so it will not have an impact on the transit of volumes through Poland. Anyone who's off-taking, for instance, in Germany, could theoretically still continue to use that route through the Yamal pipeline. As per our observations, including as of this morning, we do not see significant changes in volumes via that route.
I mean, volumes have been relatively low via that route, but that is basically because the transport route through the Ukraine as well as Nord Stream 2, Nord Stream 1, sorry, has been fully utilized. Flows have been relatively low for the Polish route, so to say. As for Bulgaria, we think it's a similar situation, so also dispute around payment in rubles. Volume affected probably in the order of magnitude of 2 BCM-3 BCM. If you put it all together in terms of impact on the market, and first of all, Poland obviously has quite significant LNG import facilities. They've been actively buying in the market over the last couple of months.
It appears to me that they've secured quite some volume specifically from the U.S., so they can probably easily replace the missing 7 BCM as per our estimates. Looking at the overall impact on supply-demand across Europe, we think this shouldn't have a material impact altogether. Having said that, I do look at the screen right now and see that the market has opened up roughly EUR 15-EUR 20 as always, on the back of the relatively small trading volumes the first hour. The market is at least initially interpreting this as a somewhat bullish signal, which I guess can be explained by the nervousness we still see in the market.
Thank you, Niek. Continuing with the ruble payments. We consider that the amendment of the payment process complies with the sanctions law and so the payments are possible. We of course continue the dialogue with the German government to be fully aligned. We are understanding that this is underpinned with the European Commission's assessment, so no change as of yet. Maybe to mention also that when it comes to the next payment under this new decree, it will happen at the end of May. When it comes to the margining, our net margining receivables were, at the end of 2021, around EUR 7 billion, and they have come down to EUR 4.5 billion.
What we have done in the meantime, so we have reduced our exposures and also our hedges have rolled off. We would say that our gas position in respect of margining is pretty flat. In that sense, the price movement in the gas shouldn't increase our liquidity need in the similar kind of amount what we saw before Christmas. At the same time, as we did before Christmas, we have done the precautionary measures to increase our liquidity buffers. In that sense, the situation is much more stable.
Thank you.
Next we have Vincent Ayral from JPMorgan. Your line is unmuted, Vincent.
Yes, good morning. I have just two questions. The first one is again regarding ruble payments. Our understanding at this stage is basically the European utilities go and pay their contract in euros to Gazprombank, which does the exchange in ruble before the contract settlement. Therefore, the conditions work for both sides. The question remains on when is the payment considered done? Because once you pay Gazprombank, after you depend upon Gazprombank doing the exchange. How does that work exactly? What are the points that still need clarification? What are the risks around that? That's ruble payment is question number one.
The question number two is, why do we have a pre-release today? I understand that yes, the profitability shift from Q1 to the rest of the quarters, but you have guidance for full year. Yes, there is a high level of volatility in your quarterly seasonality of the profitability. So was the case always with Uniper, given your carbon, your CO2 reporting, which makes it extremely difficult for us to get like a real underlying on the entire year. What was the exact reason to do this pre-release, when at the end of the day, your full guidance hasn't changed? Yes, you have some impairments done, but they were widely expected. Could you explain to us this? It was a bit of a surprise, I would say, when after once you open an email and there is no surprise inside.
Hello. Good morning, Vincent. Coming back to the ruble payments, the mechanism currently what is in a way under construction is that the payment from our end happens in euros, and then they are exchanged with the fixed exchange rate to the rubles at the Gazprombank side. Technically, the payment obligation is fulfilled when, you know, our euro amounts are going to the Gazprombank. Of course, in such details, we need to in a way look at the process and the paperwork and so forth. In that sense, more clarification and confirmation, of course, we are seeking from our legal assessment, but also what comes to the discussion with the German government.
What comes to the profit, anyway, shift, so quite frankly, this is our kind of normal optimization work, and I would say that our overall optimization is not done on quarterly basis. Gas optimization is more on the yearly or over the yearly basis, so this quarter movements are quite natural. However, our regulator, BaFin, under the Market Abuse Regulation, expects us that if there are unpredictable changes or, in a way, bigger changes compared to our previous year earnings or our earnings what we have guided before, so we need to come out and therefore we thought to be on the safe side. We wanted to give this pre-information to the external markets before our official publication of our full accounts next week.
Thank you. On the ruble payment, if I may, just to follow up, we see that everybody does not seem to basically be looking at it the same way as you do. We understand that the largest utilities, largest peers, in Western Europe, Germany, France and others, seem to be on the same page as you. It matters for you probably to understand what the others will do. Are they basically dealing with it exactly the same way? Do you have any information on that? Do you see there is any risk of disruption from other large buyers of Russian gas in Europe?
Well, naturally, we have the dialogue with Gazprom and of course the other players in the market, and especially very important to align the German approach. But as of today, of course we can't clearly see what kind of letters and communication the other countries, other companies have. That we need to ask from them and can't comment on their behalf. But naturally, the communication is important.
The conclusion there is that it's not coordinated at the European level.
Excuse me.
The conclusion is that it's not coordinated at the European level. Every country can deal with it differently, as we can see this morning.
Yeah, I can comment on that. I think that is the right assessment. We are in very close alignment, obviously, with our national government, with the German government. As you can imagine, we cannot comment on what competitors think or how they analyze the situation. I think your assessment that what we're saying is broadly in line with how the others see it is probably something I would also support. Of course, the coordination is equally happening on an EU level, right? I think our primary discussions are for the time being with the German government, where we're seeking an aligned position.
Obviously, Germany is doing that, if you will, on our behalf within the EU as well, right? The coordination is happening at all levels. You're right, there are currently different, I think, views on what exactly the implications are and whether it does or does not breach sanctions law. The discussion will have to continue.
Okay, thank you very much. Sorry for dwelling a bit further on this topic. Have a nice day.
Next we have John Musk from Royal Bank of Canada. John, your line is unmuted.
Yes, morning, everybody. Can you just, I know you went through it in some detail on the math behind the moving parts in gas storage, but I just wanted to go over that again. I missed some of it. Sorry, joining the call late. If we're shifting EUR 750 million essentially out of Q1 into later quarters, and if I look at the forward curve for gas at around about EUR 100 per MW, obviously very volatile, how do I reconcile that EUR 750 million with 13 TW and a EUR 100 , which would give me a bigger number? I assume there's a, you know, a cost of what you bought the gas at I maybe need to account for. Secondly, on your Russian business, Unipro, is there any update to your thinking with that business and potential plans to exit?
Good morning, John. Coming back to the gas storage movement. I think our main message is that how we do the optimization, the spread is relevant. Basically what we saw that the spot forward spread was EUR 5 better for the following quarters, and therefore we shifted the 13 TWh to get the gain in the future period. Of course then in the first quarter buying back the hedges it causes the negative impact. Then when we take from the storages where the book value is clearly lower, we will realize the gain. As we see, if we look at the full year impact, which is important, it is the spread and additional margin what we have gained.
What comes to the Unipro. Basically what we announced earlier this year that we have started the strategic review and the divestment process is continuously reviewed and we will resume as soon as it is possible, but clearly understandable that the timing currently is challenging. What comes to the Unipro operation, operations are continuing steadily and production volumes and no surprises in that end and we'll continue to exercise the control of the company, and therefore we consolidate and show the numbers in our quarterly report.
Okay. Thank you. That's clear.
Next is Sam Arie from UBS. Sam, your line is unmuted.
Hi. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for holding this call. It's very helpful. Lots of useful info today. Just to, from my side, one is a follow-up on what John was just asking now on Uniper. Can you comment? I suppose the question is, what's your understanding of what's possible within the sanctions? Are you expecting to be able to receive dividends from Uniper? If you were able to sell assets at some point, is it your view that you would be able to bring the proceeds out of Russia? Then, sort of related to your comment just now about continuing to consolidate the earnings, can you just comment on what would be the scenario in which you might not report Uniper earnings anymore?
I suppose the Street has taken Uniper out to the valuation, and where I'm going is, you know, whether at some point we have to think about taking the Uniper earnings out of EPS as well. That's my first one, and then second one, if you don't mind, this is one of these kind of wider questions, but just really interested in your comments. Obviously a big part of the debate is whether Europe and Germany should move faster to stop buying Russian gas at all. It feels to us that the central case for now and the German position is not to do, not to make an overnight stop, but just to keep reducing gas purchases as fast as possible.
I'm interested if you see any risk to that as a central case, I mean, any chance of Germany doing something more abrupt based on conversations you've been having. Anyway, even if we stay on this path of reducing Russian gas purchases as fast as possible, what happens if Europe's plans, you know, take demand for Russian gas below what you've already contracted? I think you have contract out to the end of the decade. Would that leave you with kind of commitment to buy gas that Europe is not wanting you to buy? Or just don't kind of understand how that part would work, so would love to hear any comments you can share on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Sam Arie. Starting with the question about Uniper and the dividends, at the moment, probably the May dividend payment, we are not counting that due to the current situation and the sanctions situation. Overall, I think we are assessing that we are able to extract the value from Uniper with one way or another, and currently, you know, temporarily embedded in this cross-border challenges. Main thing is that the company is producing, customers are paying and the operations in a way continue, and then we will assess and review the overall situation when the timing is better. Uniper will have the call on Q1 results on Friday. We will hear more about the performance. Maybe to the wider gas question, so maybe I hand over that to Niek.
Yeah, sure. I think your question was around whether we see a scenario where Germany will abruptly all of a sudden quickly step away from Russian gas. In all honesty, we don't see that at all. We rather see the opposite, which is that the government, the federal government, is doing its utmost to secure the supply of gas specifically into Germany. I think this is among others evidenced by a couple of recent examples. They stepped into in their capacity as trustee into Gazprom Germania. They've announced further liquidity support measures for the industry a couple of weeks ago, and you probably also have noticed that the Energy Security Law, which is the English translation of the German term, is being drafted.
It's still in draft status, but it also foresees actually a couple of measures that, from our point of view, rather point into the opposite. The government will do its utmost in order to make sure that this market is safeguarded, and also that the risk of curtailment is extremely low. Consequently, we don't see that scenario at all, an abrupt change. Then in the next step, I think you followed up with a question around the way forward. I think we obviously see in the news that some countries are announcing ambitions or strategic goals. The years differ, and they change continuously. For the time being, they are nothing but ambition. I think we really have to wait and see until that is being transposed into real law, into regulation.
Obviously, we're following that very closely. I think it's difficult to speculate when that may happen and how that will happen. I think until then, it's very difficult for us to give a firm position on that. What we're obviously doing simultaneously is looking into our own diversification strategy, so looking at sourcing gas through LNG predominantly from other parts of the world. That is something we're actively looking into right now, and that's obviously one of the strategies for us to diversify our own supply mix, if you will.
Okay. Very helpful on both points. Thank you.
Next, we have Deepa Venkateswaran from Bernstein. Your line is unmuted, Deepa.
Thank you. I'm gonna continue on the gas-related questions. I just wanted to clarify with you of your long-term contracts with Gazprom, how much have you back-to-back already hedged through derivatives at this point out of the 200 TWh, you know, how much of that, if there's a disruption, at least in the first order, you could get caught up in the event that you've already forward sold it to other customers. If you can quantify that. Secondly, can I just check how much of the shareholder support loan or guarantees from Fortum you have withdrawn till now?
Hello, good morning.
Morning.
What comes to our LTC, basically, we don't have the outright position. Basically, we synchronize our supply and sales leg. In that sense, fairly well-balanced going forward. What comes to our shareholder support, at the end of the Q1, we had drawn the loan by EUR 4 billion and then EUR 2.5 billion in guarantees, total of EUR 6.5 billion out of the total facility of EUR 8 billion.
Thank you. Sorry, can I just clarify? When you're saying you're not doing outright, I do understand that you have back-to-back contracts. In a hypothetical situation if there is a stoppage of supply contracts, clearly not all your 200 TWh would be exposed. I was just wondering whether it is mostly on a monthly basis, quarterly basis. What proportion of that is immediately at risk because you have forward sold, or is it the entire 200 TWh?
I think the way you can best look at our portfolio is that the volumes gradually are tracked in and we sell forward to our customers, which we typically do year ahead, and to a somewhat lesser extent, two years out, and to a somewhat lower extent again, three years out, because that's a typical B2B contracting type of pattern. I think that's the best way to look at our exposure in that respect. We try to almost back to back, i.e. neutralize the risk as much as possible in terms of the volumes that we gradually receive from Gazprom and that we sell forward to our customers.
We try to balance that as much as possible, and we're typically quite successful in that respect. The main volumes a re typically in the current year and year ahead, and you know our sales volumes probably, and then that is ramping down, the year thereafter and another significant step the year thereafter. It's simply because that is the typical B2B sourcing pattern that most of the industrial clients in Germany follow, and that is matching quite well with our volumes.
Okay, thank you.
We have James Brand from Deutsche Bank. Your line is unmuted, James.
Hi, good morning. I'm gonna buck the trend a little bit and ask a slightly different track question. On the SE2 and the issues that you're having there, I guess three parts of it. Like, if you allow it, 'cause it's kind of one question. Firstly, how much, what proportion of your volumes in the Nordics are in SE2? Secondly, do you see any resolution to the pressures there? Is this a temporary thing or it's gonna get any better anytime soon, or it's just gonna be a very difficult market there for a long period of time? And thirdly, when you have negative prices there, how easy is it for you to curtail your production, or you just start accepting the negative prices? Thank you very much.
Good morning. Basically in our SE2 price area, we have our hydro production. What comes to the volumes in Q1, they were around 2.4 TWh, and on the yearly basis, 8 TWh. I think that of course the situation what we have experienced is related to grid congestions. Of course it will depend on the hydro balance situation, how much there is the wind with the industrial, in a way, demand and now the timing for Q1, prices went, I would say abnormally big swing compared to the system price. I think there are continuous dialogues with the Svenska kraftnät, the network company, to in a way stabilize and get more capacity. As we can see, it is not a quick solve. The balances are moving and we see that more capacity is in the northern areas of Sweden. Niek might want to add on.
Yeah. I just wanted to add one thing. I'm not sure if I got the question correctly, but we're not talking about negative prices, but about negative EPEX prices, right? The Nordic region has a system price, which is basically the, say, the arithmetic average of the price areas. There's several one in Norway, several ones in Sweden, Finland. The system price is the average, and then there's contract for differences or EPEX, which are basically giving you the delta versus system price, some of them positive, some of them negative. In the Swedish price area where we have most of our hydro production, they are typically trading somewhat below system price. As of recently, it has been delivering very negatively. The system price plus EPEX price is what matters at the end of the day.
The EPEX price has been very negative, so the delta versus system price has been very big. Now the problem that we're facing is that there's hardly any liquidity in that specific EPEX product. We can trade system price, so we can hedge our exposure by selling system price. As you will understand from what I just explained, that's just a proxy for SE2. If you cannot really hedge the EPEX, which is increasingly difficult because of low liquidity, you are obviously exposed to that EPEX. That price differential in delivery, and that is what we're talking about here. That's what has impacted our results to some extent over Q1.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Question of the day from Lueder Schumacher from Société Générale. Your line is unmuted.
Yes. Hi, it's Lueder here from SocGen. Just a few follow-up questions on my side. On the variation margin, if I understood you right, you said the requirement has come down from EUR 7 billion to EUR 4.5 billion. I just wonder, how can this be when you're not withdrawing gas from storage? My understanding was that a lot of your variation margin requirement or outflows were linked to volumes that are in gas storage. So if you could shed a bit more light on that would be great. The second one is on Uniper. I mean, you're still the legal owner. Could you theoretically use Uniper cash flows to make ruble payments for the gas that you're procuring from Russia? Is that a possibility? Is that legally even possible?
I don't know, but it would be interesting to get a view on this. The last one is on something that Niek just said. He said that the Energy Security Law is being drafted. My understanding is that it was drafted in 1975. What is being drafted? What is being looked at?
Yeah, good. I can start with that last question. Thanks for correcting me. I should have said redrafted, probably, because there is indeed an existing law that's currently being redrafted. I think it's given that it is from a couple of decades ago. I think it's basically made fit for purpose for the current situation, right? That's probably how I would phrase it. Does that answer your question?
Yes, but it would be great if you could elaborate a bit. Basically, the law is currently being made fit to the current situation. Is that a legal process that is underway to prepare for complete stop of Russian gas volumes or bigger containment?
No, it's rather about how the market will be controlled, operated in case of emergency situation and what can be done in order to safeguard security of supply. I mean, it's in draft status. I've understood it will only come into effect at the end of May. We don't know all of the details yet, but that is on a high level what it's foreseeing.
Okay. That's very interesting. Thank you.
I think the original draft of the legislation back then was rather focusing on regional issues, and I think also with a focus on other commodities or markets than specifically gas. That's why I would call it a redraft of the law.
Okay.
I would also take your first question, and then I think Tina will take the other one. So on the variation margin, variation margin is essentially out of the moneyness of hedges, right? But it's across the curve. We obviously have exposures, well, from today until a couple of years out. Specifically when we're talking about withdrawing gas, we're obviously talking about the current quarter, right? There's also a mark-to-market for the part of the curve that we don't talk about in case we're speaking about the specific impact that the adjustment of the storage optimization has had on our Q1 earnings. That would be my first comment.
Secondly, I mean, whether we withdraw or don't withdraw doesn't have so much of an impact on the M to M of the hedges, obviously, because that is ultimately determined by market prices. It has an impact on our risk position, but not so much on the variation margin. I hope that clarifies. Tina?
Thank you. Coming back to Uniper. Basically the question of how we could extract the value. We believe that there is a value and of course we'll look at the potential. We have the ruble cash flows there, so all the alternatives are of course available, how we try to keep and maximize the value from on that segment.
The question wasn't really how you extract value. It was more on the possibility of using Uniper cash flows to make ruble payments for the gas that you are importing. Is that a possibility?
Currently, I think we are dealing with the Uniper business as a Uniper business and then our LDCs and the payment terms, so as a separate dialogue. Currently that's not in our plans.
Okay. Thank you.
Sorry to interrupt, but, being conscious of time, obviously there are a lot of questions that we fully understand. However, we need to end this call now. For any further questions, please, contact our IR team. We try to help as much as possible. Aside from that, thank you very much to everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect now. Thank you so much.