Importantly for shareholders, it returned $47.8 million to them with a 28% final dividend.
This has the board confident the company can increase the total amount of 2014-15 dividends for shareholders in line with the progressive dividend policy it announced earlier this year.
EDL is the largest waste coal mine gas and landfill gas energy generator in Australia, and is also a leading landfill gas to energy generator of scale in the United States and the United Kingdom.
In the year ended June 30, its global operations produced about 3.7 million megawatt hours, enough to power over 600,000 homes; while its landfill gas stations globally, along with waste coal mine power stations in Australia, abated and avoided about 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing 3.5 million cars from the road.
Koczkar said the company was seeing increasing demand for distributed generation in Australia, driven by the ever-increasing costs of transmission and distribution networks and the big effect they have on electricity prices.
The chairman said this presents “great opportunities” for EDL as it has the expertise and capabilities to give power to customers “on their doorstep”
The company is also seeing solid growth in the remote energy business, with continuing demand for remote and off-grid energy supply.
“Our remote energy and off-grid customers are continually looking for new solutions to
displace existing diesel generation with more cost-effective gas or renewable solutions,” the chairman said.
“EDL is well placed to deliver on these growing demands, given our strong experience in providing
innovative remote energy solutions.”
As an example, he cited the company’s first solar and wind project during the year at Coober Pedy, South Australia, which is supported by over $16 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which is backed by $2.5 billion of federal government money.
Its waste coal mine gas business is also flourishing, with 254MW of installed capacity across nine projects in Australia.
Its coal gas projects largely support underground metallurgical coal mine operations and are underpinned by long-dated gas supply contracts with blue-chip global mining houses such as Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Glencore.
“We were very pleased to have acquired the Envirogen 43MW waste coal mine gas business during the year and I am happy to report that the Envirogen projects are performing well,” Koczkar said.
“Daily generation from these projects is up by 60%.”
The company also increased its corporate debt facility to $563 million, with a revised and repriced debt facility forecast to deliver relative annual savings of at least $8 million.
“This refinancing allows EDL to further improve its financial returns and positions the company for continued growth,” the chairman said.
