Lithuanian Ignitis calls on energy companies to donate 10% of excess profits to help Ukraine
The war in Ukraine and the energy crisis are the reasons for the excess profits of energy companies
Lithuania's largest energy company has decided to donate 10% of its excess profits to Ukraine. And it called on more than 50 of the world's largest energy companies to follow suit, as they largely received the extra profit as a result of the war-induced price increases.
Source. This was reported by moscowtimes.eu.
Electricity company Ignitis Group will ask the shareholders' meeting to approve the transfer of 10% of its excess profits, or 12 million euros, to rebuild Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) amounted to €469.3 million in 2022, with the green power generation division accounting for more than half of this amount (€252.1 million).
The company considers almost half of this division's profit to be additional, due to the growth in demand and prices for green electricity as a result of last year's energy crisis, and wants to transfer 10% to Ukraine.
Ignitis Group is a publicly traded Lithuanian state-owned company operating in the Baltic States, Poland and Finland.
Ignitis has also appealed to more than fifty energy companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, TotalEnergies, Equinor, and others, to also transfer about 10% of their excess profits to Ukraine.
CEO Darius Maikštenas said:
"We urge you to follow our example and allocate a portion of the 2022 profits to Ukraine. We believe it is morally right to share our profits with a country that is suffering from the consequences of the war that generated them. The strong growth of energy companies' profits was not the result of investments or business strategies, but of higher prices as a result of the war," Maikštenas added.
The largest beneficiary among the leading Western companies was Norwegian Equinor, which received a record pre-tax profit of $75 billion in 2022 due to rising gas prices and increased exports to Europe.
BP, Shell, and Exxon Mobil also made record profits. The total profit of oil and gas companies after taxes exceeded $200 billion.
Background. As a reminder, a complaint was filed against the French giant TotalEnergies for "complicity in war crimes" in Ukraine.
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