Press releases pg. 49

CEZ Group’s H1 operating income before tax (EBITDA) was CZK 32.1 billion, up 19% year-on-year. Net income increased by 45% to CZK 11.2 billion. The increase is primarily due to increased realization prices of generated electricity and higher revenue from commodity trading. Net income adjusted for extraordinary effects was CZK 12.0 billion.

At the weekend, Unit 2 of Temelín NPP started to produce electricity again. It has been shut down for refueling of from June 21. The outage lasted 50 days and, during it, the technicians replaced a quarter of the fuel, checked the safety systems and mastered over sixty various modernizations. The overall outage schedule included over 13 thousand activities. In the first halve of the week the Unit will achieve the full power. The Temelín's Unit 2 outage will be closely followed by Dukovany NPP Unit 1 outage. It starts on Friday, August 16.

Yesterday afternoon, Dukovany technicians brought special equipment from their colleagues from Temelín. Its task will be to perform complete diagnostics of a minor leak on one of the steam generators at the second production unit. Thanks to its unique properties, the device is able to provide a detailed status of the monitored material. The experts will then use the information to prepare the follow-up work. The checks will be extremely detailed and will take several days. As a result, the start-up of the unit will be postponed probably to the beginning of September. But all will very much depend on the positive results of the repair.

ČEZ traders now trade electricity products on the wholesale market in almost all European countries. They are also currently expanding to markets trading in natural gas, environmental certificates and related financial products.