German power giant E ON falls deeper into red in Q3

E.ON, Germany's biggest power supplier, said Wednesday that its losses widened in the third quarter as it contends with weak electricity prices and negative exchange rate effects.
E.ON said net loss deepened to 835 million euros ($1.04 billion) in the period from July to September from 464 million euros a year earlier.
Third-quarter sales were up 2.2 percent at 25.229 billion euros.
Taking the first nine months, E.ON swung to a loss of 14 million euros from profit of 2.611 billion euros a year earlier.
Underlying or operating profit was down by 7.0 percent at 6.637 billion euros and nine-month sales declined by 8.9 percent to 81.348 billion euros.
The figures were "in line with expectations," said chief financial officer Klaus Schaefer.
"Our nine-month results have us on course for our full-year forecast," Schaefer said.
"Our cost-cutting programme is making very good progress, and we've already met our full-year target of achieving 1.2 billion euros in lasting savings. At the nine-month mark we also reduced our debt by 1.2 billion euros."
E.ON said its forecast for full-year 2014 earnings "continues to be significantly influenced by the difficult business environment in the energy industry."
In concrete terms, E.ON is pencilling in underlying profits of 8.0-8.6 billion euros and net profit of 1.5-1.9 billion euros, the report said.