CEZ Power Company paid another 15.5m EUR for Electrica Oltenia to the Romanian government

The economic health of CEZ Group's Electrica Oltenia is much better according to the post-acquisition audit. Net assets have increased by 107m RON (ca 29m EUR) after the economic audit for 2004 and the first nine months of 2005. Therefore CEZ is going to pay 15.5m EUR more for Electrica Oltenia, which represent a 51 % increase in net assets and correspond to the majority share of CEZ in Oltenia.

CEZ has paid total 166.5m EUR (ca 4.9bn CZK) for Oltenia. This is the very last payment according to the concluded privatization contract. The results of Oltenia are markedly better than the estimate in the business plan, the company´s economy is improving at a dynamic pace, said Jan VeĹˇkrna, director of CEZ Romania. CEZ Group acquired Electrica Oltenia upon the results of the privatization tender at the beginning of October last year. Electrica Oltenia is the largest of eight Romanian distribution companies with 19% share of the Romanian electricity market and with roughly 1.36m customers. It operates in the area of almost half the size of the Czech Republic, in seven of total 40 Romanian districts. It employs 2970 people. Total electricity annual output supplied by the company represents ca 6.8 TWh.

The number of end customers of the CEZ Group reached already 6.6 million by the Romanian acquisition. By that, the CEZ Group has come up from the ninth to the eighth place among the European power companies by the number of customers.

Results of Electrica Oltenia according to the IFRS:

million EUR	2003	2004
Revenues	361	399
EBITDA	-17	70
EBIT	-119	49
Net gains	-58	46
Net liability (liability - cash)	1	1
* translated by 3.558 rate RON/EUR
Average number of employees	2 960	2 930
Number of customers	1 364 901	1 371 398

Eva Novakova, Press Officer CEZ, a. s.

2. 2. 2006