E.ON posts loss on impairment charge

E.ON SE recorded a significant loss during the third quarter, after booking an impairment charge of 8.3 billion euros ($8.9 billion), the company said Wednesday.

The company's third-quarter net loss came to EUR7.25 billion, wider than the EUR835 million loss a year earlier.

The company had said in September it would book a charge of up to EUR9 billion, so the move didn't come as a surprise for investors. At the time, E.ON said the charge was necessitated by low electricity and commodity prices as well as regulatory uncertainty, and that the company would post a loss this year.

Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization fell to EUR5.36 billion in the first nine months of the year, from EUR6.53 billion in the year-earlier period, dragged down by power plant decommissioning and the sale of operations in Spain and Italy.

The company affirmed its outlook and said it still plans to pay a dividend of EUR0.50 per share for 2015, unchanged from the payout for 2014. It also said plans were on track to spin off the conventional energy business, minus its German nuclear operations, to a new company, Uniper.

"The separation of our company into two operationally independent entities is entering the final phase," E.ON Chief Executive Johannes Teyssen said.