The president of Endesa, José Bogas, assured this Friday that “there is nothing behind” the departure of Nuno Ribeiro da Silva from the leadership of Endesa Portugal, except the fact that he has reached an age that justifies his departure, rejecting who was sidelined due to controversial statements about electricity price hikes last summer.
At the press conference that followed the presentation of the 2022 accounts, Endesa’s leader was asked about the reason for replacing Nuno Ribeiro da Silva with Guillermo Soler Calero in January, confirming something that had been known since the autumn.
With Nuno Ribeiro da Silva “the same thing happens with me, we get older”, replied José Bogas to the journalist from the Lusa agency, in Madrid. The leader of Endesa and Ribeiro da Silva are practically the same age – Ribeiro da Silva was born in 1954 and José Bogas in 1955.
“I think that [ele] he did an extraordinary job, but it comes to everyone, and it will come to me too, the moment when we have to leave the way open to others. But there’s nothing more to it than that.”
In the summer of 2022, shortly after the Iberian mechanism to curb electricity prices was implemented, Ribeiro da Silva, in an interview with Business Journal and Antena 1, left in the air the idea that prices could rise by 40% in Portugal due to the cost of this measure, provoking denials from the Government and criticism from various quarters.
José Bogas admitted that “perhaps there was a little [de impacto no número de clientes da Endesa em Portugal] in the first month” after these statements, which he considered “unfortunate”, but also “misinterpreted”. “More than a criticism”, he said, they were a way of “expressing the differences” in the application of the mechanism in Portugal and Spain and the need for “harmonization” between the two countries.
“Perhaps they were not made [as declarações] at the right time, but his departure was already planned before these criticisms, or demonstrations he made”, assured José Bogas.
Endesa has investments in renewable energies in Portugal in the solar area and was the winner of the tender to create a new green energy center in Abrantes, on the site where the coal-fired power plant operated.
In addition, it is one of the shareholders of the Pego natural gas power plant and the second largest supplier of electricity, after EDP Comercial.
In 2022, the group that is controlled by the Italian company Enel saw net income grow by 26%, to 2,389 million euros. The result was “better than in 2021, thanks mainly to the good performance of the gas business and the high level of operation of the combined cycle plants”, in a period marked by drought in the Iberian region.
The company explained in a statement that “this amount will allow us to propose the distribution of a gross dividend of 1.585 euros per share, 6% above the forecast”.