Industry News

Utilities Middle East

Summary

National Central Cooling Company PJSC (DFM: Tabreed), the leading international district cooling developer based in UAE, released today its consolidated financial results for the first three months of 2020, reporting net profit of AED 82.2 million, an increase of 3% compared to its 2019 Q1 performance.

In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the company has taken every precaution to ensure continuous uninterrupted service is maintained to all of its customers while also adopting industry-leading health and safety practices and sanitization programmes to ensure the safety of its staff during these challenging times.

Notwithstanding the unprecedented global pandemic, the company continues to meet the growing demand for district cooling solutions and has recently announced the acquisition of its Downtown Dubai district cooling business in a long-term partnership with Emaar, one of the world’s largest real estate companies and a global property developer, to provide up to 235,000 RT of cooling from the largest integrated district cooling scheme in the world to some of Emaar’s most prestigious developments.

Financial highlights – three months ended 31 March 2020:

• Decrease in revenue of 1% driven by results from value chain businesses
• Chilled water revenue in line with prior year
• Gross margins marginally up on prior year at 55%
• Finance costs down due to lower rates
• Increase in administrative and other expenses mainly from a provision of AED 10 million on receivables due to impact of COVID-19 offset by cost savings
• EBITDA increased by 5% to AED 178.2 million (Q1 2019: AED 170.2)

Operational highlights – three months ended 31 March 2020:

• Staff were successfully rotated to ensure at least 50% of workers were on call at any given time, while all necessary precautions are being taken to ensure their safety amid the threat of the spread of COVID-19
• Management were able to mitigate the threat of the virus by ensuring that services were maintained with minimal staff interaction and exposure leveraging its state-of-the-art technology and operation philosophy coupled with thorough and regular sanitization of plants and offices

Environmental highlights – three months ended 31 March 2020:

• Tabreed’s energy efficient services prevented the release of 1,233,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the course of the previous year – the equivalent of eliminating the emissions from 268,000 vehicles.