Following a bumpy year of coinciding negative factors, Contact Energy has rolled out full year profits of NZ$117.5 million, exactly half last year's NZ$237.1 million. The underlying earnings per share were dragged down to 27.35 cents - due to the weather, the electricity transmission system, inflexible gas contracts and a customer exodus - which comes as a fall of 31 percent from 39.6 cents in the previous year. The interim dividend is being held at 17 cents per share by the company, payable on 22 September.

This has been based upon the expectation that the company's financial performance would return to normal trends. Managing Director David Baldwin said: "Any recurrence of extreme hydrology, transmission constraints, adverse government policy changes, or a prolonging of the recession could impact Contact's financial performance in the near-to-medium term. To the extent such impacts do occur, the company would be unlikely to maintain distributions at this year's level."

He further continued that it is not ethical to provide quantitative guidance for the 2010 full year financial performance at this time, with the number of market and operating uncertainties. A further 8000 electricity customers left Contact for competitors, as indicated by the quarterly operational statistics released with this morning's result.

It should be noted that just over 50,000 customers, have been lost by Contact from 479,000 customers, which accounts to nearly 10% of its customer base. About the results, Baldwin elaborated: "The result was achieved on operating revenue of $2.222 billion, down 19.39 per cent on the previous year, yielding earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, financial instruments and other significant items down 21.49 per cent at NZ$445.26 million.

Underlying earnings after tax, which exclude the impacts of one-offs and changes in fair value of financial instruments, were down 31 per cent at NZ$160.62 million."