• Home
• /
• Business

Qatar Electricity and Water Q2 profit rises 16% to $86m

DOHA - Qatar Electricity and Water Co., the second-largest utility in the Middle East by market capitalisation, announced a second-quarter profit of 314.7 million riyals ($86.5 million), beating analyst estimates.

The results for the three months to June 30 showed a 16 per cent rise from the 271.8 million riyals that the company reported a year earlier, according to a financial statement posted on the Qatar Exchange website on Friday.

The company didn’t give a reason for the increase. The result beat the 297 million- riyal mean estimate of 
three analysts.

The company is a shareholder in the new 2,000 megawatt Mesaieed Power Co. plant and the 2,730 megawatt Ras Laffan C plant, called Ras Girtas, which is scheduled to reach full capacity in 2011.

“The capacity addition from Mesaieed and Ras Girtas will feed the revenue starting from this year,” said Essam Abd El Alim, analyst at Cairo-based Naeem Holding who forecast a second-quarter profit of 
255 million riyals.

Qatar Electricity, which is 43 per cent government-owned and operates power and water desalination plants throughout the Gulf Arab emirate, has benefited from the country’s expanding power demand.

Qatar, which has the world’s third-largest gas reserves, plans to raise its power generation output to 9,000 megawatts in the coming years and may export electricity to neighboring countries, Energy Minister Abdullah Bin Hamad al-Attiyah said in May. Attiyah is also the chairman of Qatar Electricity.

Qatar Electricity is also expanding outside of the emirate. The company has bid to build a plant in Oman, Attiyah said at the time, and it announced in April it would sign an accord with Syrian-Qatari Holding Co. to build two electric stations in Syria.