Eskom Doubles Profit After Ending South Africa Power Outages
(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s state power utility more than doubled its full-year profit after ending outages that hobbled economic growth, and is now targeting slumping electricity sales in the next phase of its turnaround.
Profit after tax jumped to 30.3 billion rand ($1.9 billion) in the year through March, compared with 14 billion rand in 2025, Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. said in a statement on Monday. Power cuts ended in May last year as the company improved its performance and cut spending on costly diesel-fired turbines used to bolster generation by 10.6 billion rand.
“We must not declare the turnaround complete,” South African Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said at a results presentation in Johannesburg. “The next task is to ensure that Eskom’s recovery becomes durable, self-sustaining and resilient in a changing electricity market.”
The period included only 13 days with power cuts. Despite the utility improving the reliability of its mostly coal-fired plants and increased prices, sales volumes dropped 6.2% — highlighted by a 23% decline in industrial usage. That marked a decade-long trend of sales dropping about 2% annually.
As power cuts intensified in previous years, South Africa introduced reforms to end the state-owned company’s monopoly and open the electricity market to private producers and traders. While Eskom Chief Executive Officer Dan Marokane accepts a migration by some customers to rooftop solar, he sees the biggest consumers of power as a key market that the utility is well placed to serve.
“In the last few months, we’ve been working hard to reignite demand from the industrial sector in particular,” Marokane said in an interview. The company reached a deal earlier this year to keep ferrochrome smelters run by Glencore Plc and Samancor Chrome Ltd. supplied with cheaper electricity.
Eskom is also focusing on an emerging customer base that’s “driving new demand in the area of data centers, electric vehicles, charging stations,” and is in “advanced discussions” with the regulator about selling power to crypto miners, he said.
The utility will use its profits to help fund its capital expenditure program, which envisages 343 billion rand being invested across the group over the next five years. It launched Eskom Green earlier this year, a clean-energy unit that will take on the private producers which typically use renewable technologies.
Eskom continues to face challenges from unpaid municipal bills that reached 119 billion rand in June. That figure may reach 358 billion rand by the 2031 financial year “if decisive intervention is not implemented,” it said.
Debt securities and borrowings declined to 356 billion rand by the end of the financial year, and eased further to about 320 billion rand by the end of June, Eskom said.
Cost reductions were partially offset by wage increases of 7% and a growing number of staff.
“Eskom will continue to optimize its cost base by driving higher productivity across the workforce and improved organizational performance, while aligning rewards with operational and financial outcomes,” the company said.
Eskom also announced Chief Financial Officer Calib Cassim’s retirement. The board intends to choose a replacement to take over the role by the end of the year.
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