Holding & Services Segment

Business development in the Holding & Services Segment

The Holding & Services Segment generated sales revenues of EUR 274.7 million in the reporting period. This is equivalent to an increase of EUR 14.8 million or 5.7%. This positive development was attributable to sales revenue growth in the telecommunications business area and across all service companies.

The operating result rose from EUR 14.4 million in the 2019/2020 fiscal year to EUR 28.1 million in the reporting period. The main reason for this development was an increase in the share of earnings from investments consolidated at equity due to reversals of impairment in the amount of EUR 15.4 million. This reversal of impairment was made on the basis of expected future payment surpluses from Wels Strom GmbH as a result of the additional procurement of heat from a waste incineration plant, the exploitation of synergy effects through the transfer of operational management in the area of hydroelectric power and the electricity grid as well as restructuring measures.

In addition, the result in the Holding & Services Segment was influenced by higher EBIT contributions from the telecommunications business area and the service areas, and by increased expenses in the holding environment. In the previous year, EBIT included higher property sales than in the reporting period in addition to impairments on telecommunications equipment.

Unabated demand for broadband internet

Even though the COVID-19 situation eased in the second half of the last fiscal year and home office and home schooling activities were increasingly replaced by attendance-based teaching, the demand for high-speed internet remained high.

The situation in the past eighteen months has shown that video conferences can make valuable contributions to time-saving and efficient work in everyday professional or school life. In addition, the choice of private entertainment offerings and streaming providers is constantly growing. A fast and stable internet connection based on future-proof fibre-optic technology is therefore becoming increasingly important for large parts of the population.

Length of fibre-optic network

in km

With a view to this, Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) expansion was continued as planned in the 2020/2021 fiscal year. By the end of the reporting period, more than 45,000 Upper Austrian households already had the opportunity to connect to Energie AG's fibre-optic network. As of 30 September 2021, the length of the Group's own fibre-optic network had reached 7,021 km (previous year: 6,600 km).

In addition to fibreglass as a landline technology, LTE and/or 5G technology will become firmly established in the mobile sector. For this reason, Telekom GmbH intends to leverage business opportunities also in this sector by connecting mobile transmitter sites to the company's own fibre-optic network.

Another area of Telekom GmbH's business activity has been implementing smart metering to provide electricity metering services for Netz OÖ GmbH. Since the mass roll-out of smart meters has now been successfully completed and the legal requirements have been met in full, Telekom GmbH transferred the metering division to its affiliated company Netz OÖ GmbH at the beginning of the 2021/2022 fiscal year. In addition to the associated organisational work, the focus in the reporting period was on replacing the remaining analogue meters as well as on projects dealing with the further development and expansion of the smart meter system.

Strategic investments

The at-equity consolidated companies Wels Strom GmbH and Salzburg AG, as well as further minority holdings complete the business portfolio of Energie AG.

Wels Strom GmbH, in which Energie AG holds a 49% interest, is the integrated electricity supply company of the city of Wels. Other business areas include heat generation for the municipal district heating network and energy systems for key account customers.

The new replacement construction of the Traunleiten hydropower plant, which began in 2017 and was completed in 2020, has been integrated into the Wels Strom GmbH procurement system as planned. The investment volume was EUR 48.0 million. The Traunleiten hydropower plant enables full coverage of the domestic electricity demand for the greater Wels area solely with green electricity from hydroelectric power. Output was doubled to 19 MW with annual production of 91 GWh in the future.

In the last reporting period (1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020), the electricity sales volume to customers fell to 692 GWh (2019: 723 GWh), 17% of which was covered by proprietary production, mainly from hydroelectric power; some 18% of the electricity distribution was generated outside the grid area of Wels Strom GmbH.

In the scope of an extensive strategy project that started in 2020, the owners of Wels Strom GmbH – eww ag and Energie AG – are realigning the supply of heat and energy to the Wels area in cooperation with the subsidiary. The aim is to leverage synergy potentials and improve service quality by creating a single point of contact for the Wels supply networks for electricity, district heating, gas, water and waste water. The operational implementation steps of this comprehensive future initiative started in the reporting period and will continue until the end of 2022.

In the summer of 2020, Salzburg AG für Energie, Verkehr und Telekommunikation (Salzburg AG) committed itself to a forward looking, growth-oriented strategy and therefore set itself the task of strategic and organisational realignment. This is intended to underline the transformation from a simple utility and regional infrastructure service provider with activities in the fields of electricity, natural gas, district heating, water, mobility and telecommunications to a digital technology company. Energie AG holds a 26.13% interest in the entity.

Massive investments were made primarily in the growth fields of photovoltaics and e-mobility in the last complete fiscal year (1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020). The goal in the photovoltaic sector is to become one of the five largest suppliers of solar energy in Austria within the next seven years. The first steps were taken in the form of an investment in a start-up company focusing on IT security in the operation of photovoltaic plants. In the area of e-mobility, the milestone of 100 charging solutions for private and business customers was exceeded.

Every year, some EUR 25 million is invested in the expansion of broadband internet to create conditions which are conducive to new digital services. As part of its corporate venture programme, Salzburg AG is also investing in promising start-ups, for example in the area of smart pick-up stations for parcel delivery.

The course of business in the 2020 fiscal year was fraught by COVID-19-related declines in sales of electricity and gas as well as a decline in grid distribution volumes of electricity, gas, district heating and water. The transport sector was also hit hard by the pandemic, with passenger numbers dropping by an average of 30%. Electricity and gas sales to customers were at 3,304 GWh and 1,606 GWh, respectively, which is 4.8% and 6.7% below the level of the previous year. At 759 GWh, district heating sales were 2.4% down on the previous year's figure. As in the previous fiscal years, sales success was noted in cable TV and internet offerings. The number of internet customer systems exceeded a value of 107,000.

In total, Salzburg AG invested EUR 132.8 million in the reporting period, with a focus on the grid sector.

Shared services

The four Group-wide service companies

• Energie AG Oberösterreich Business Services GmbH (Business Services GmbH),
• Energie AG Oberösterreich Customer Services GmbH (Customer Services GmbH),
• Energie AG Oberösterreich Personalmanagement GmbH (Personalmanagement GmbH) as well as
• Energie AG Oberösterreich Tech Services GmbH (Tech Services GmbH)

are combined in the Holding & Services Segment.

These service companies provide commercial and technical services for the entire Group in accordance with precisely defined quality and safety standards. These services are guided by external market conditions for similar products and services.

Business Services GmbH bundles services for the Energie AG Group in the areas of purchasing and logistics, real estate management, information technology, accounting, and insurance and legal services. The focus of work in the 2020/2021 fiscal year was on preliminary work for the introduction of the “digital logbook”, the implementation of a large number of steps to improve IT security and the realisation of a preliminary project for S/4HANA transformation, the ongoing project to adapt the SAP system architecture for billing and customer services was continued with the project rollout for the gas sector being completed in the 2020/2021 fiscal year. In addition, the reporting period included the start of the implementation phase for the extension to Group headquarters in Linz in the form of an office building with an energy-efficient design. At the same time, initial steps were taken in the scope of the construction of a new office and workshop building in Gmunden.

Customer Services GmbH bundles the Group's customer services and data protection back office, billing, provider switch management, receivables management and payment processing in customer-facing operations. In the 2020/2021 fiscal year, employees provided services for more than 1.5 million customer contracts.

In addition to the reliable provision of all services in the face of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020/2021 fiscal year was characterised by many projects. In the reporting period, for example, the focus was on the topics of “blocking/unblocking of personal data” and “establishing market processes in the scope of the Renewable Energy Expansion Act package”. Customer Services GmbH was also strongly involved in the project to adapt the SAP system architecture in the area of billing and customer services.

Personalmanagement GmbH's activities is both on matters related to personnel strategy and personnel policy for the Group, governed by the division “HR Strategy and Control”, and on all agendas relating to personnel and management development, personnel support, personnel accounting and apprenticeship programs. In addition to the challenges posed by COVID-19, the focus in the 2020/2021 fiscal year was on employer branding activities, and in particular on the promotion of a trainee programme for graduates from technical schools (Höhere Technische Lehranstalt, HTL) and the development of campaigns for drivers and skilled workers. On top of this, junior staff were supported with individual development measures in the past fiscal year, in the scope of a re-run of the Power Talent Programme. A Group-wide survey of employees was implemented during the reporting period, as was a works council agreement for sabbaticals. The extension of the “berufundfamilie” (work and family) audit certificate for another three years and the associated measures to facilitate a good balance between work and family life formed another focus of human resources work.

As the central expertise owner for all technical services at Energie AG, Tech Services GmbH is the expert point of contact for planning, implementation and maintenance. These services were primarily provided for affiliated companies in the Group in the 2020/2021 fiscal year. Orders from external customers were also secured, especially in the area of highly specialised services and to balance capacity utilisation. In addition to renewed challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as special protection measures to ensure the availability of critical infrastructure installation personnel and the handling of construction sites under special precautionary measures, increasing delivery difficulties for important components also had to be overcome. Despite these difficult conditions, it was again possible to process a substantial volume of orders this year.