Japan's biggest power generator Jera said on Wednesday its April-June net profit nearly halved on smaller gains from a time-lag effect in a fuel price adjustment mechanism, and stuck to its annual forecast even though its Taketoyo coal-fired power plant remains shut.
The 1,070-megawatt (MW) Taketoyo power station in Aichi Prefecture has been shut since it was hit by a fire on Jan. 31.
Jera, an unlisted company jointly owned by Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, reported ¥93.4 billion ($619 million) in profit for the April-June quarter, down 48% from the year-ago period.
The fall in profit showed the impact of a drop in the time-lag gain — when a change in fuel prices is reflected in sale prices with a delay — which shrank to ¥20.3 billion in the quarter from ¥155.3 billion a year earlier.
Jera — Japan's biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas — said that its profit, excluding the time-lag effects, had increased to ¥73 billion from ¥23.1 billion a year earlier, thanks to improved competitiveness in procuring LNG and thermal coal.
"We always make an effort to purchase fuels at lower prices ... but last year, some deals where we tried to fix coal prices backfired. We've made improvements this year," Jera's executive officer, Naohiro Maekawa, told a news conference.
Asked about the timing of restarting Taketoyo plant, Maekawa said no date has been set yet.
The Taketoyo shutdown is expected to have a negative impact of several tens of billions of yen for the full-year due to the use of alternative fuels such as LNG, but this estimate has been factored into the annual forecast, he said.
For the year ending in March 2025, Jera maintained its annual forecast of ¥200 billion profit.