British Energy says plant repairs, outages to weigh on revenue Filed: 03/06/2000

By Melissa Pozsgay c.2000 Bloomberg News

London, March 6 (Bloomberg)  British Energy Plc, the U.K.'s biggest power generator, said repair work on faulty nuclear reactors and related outages will weigh on revenue in the first few months of fiscal 2001.

The company cut its forecast for output from its nuclear power stations to 63 TWh, down from 64 to 65 TWh, because of repair work at some stations. It said it expects fiscal 2000 profit to be "broadly in line" with expectations.

British Energy shares have lost more than half of their value in the past 12 months as its business has been plagued by problems at the reactors as well as concern that planned reforms of power pool trading arrangements in the U.K. will hurt profit.

"Contract prices continue to reduce in the face of increased competition through all sectors of the market, although the annual contracts market has been thinner at this stage than in previous years due to uncertainty" about the new trading rules, the company said in a statement.

The stock fell 0.5 pence, or 0.2 percent, to 255p ($4.03), after rising as much as 5.7 percent earlier.

British Energy also said it completed its purchase of the Eggborough coal-fired power station from National Power Plc. It paid 615 million pounds for the plant.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 07, 2000