South Africa’s state-owned power utility, Eskom, has reported a second consecutive year of profitability, with group profit after…
South Africa’s state-owned power utility, Eskom, has reported a second consecutive year of profitability, with group profit after tax rising to R30.3 billion for the financial year ended 31 March 2026, up from a restated R14 billion the previous year, even as industrial electricity demand fell sharply.
The company said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margin improved to 30.63%, from 28.75% the prior year, driven by better generating plant availability, cost discipline and reduced reliance on emergency diesel generation.
Credit: Independent Newspaper
Revenue grew 4.1%, supported by a regulatory tariff increase of 12.74%, but overall sales volumes declined 6.2% to 178 terawatt-hours (TWh), with industrial demand alone falling 9.7TWh, or 22.5%, year-on-year.
To offset the drop in industrial consumption, Eskom’s Distribution division said it is pursuing a diversified sales-retention strategy that includes structural growth into data centres and electric-vehicle charging, alongside wheeling optimisation, renewable power purchase agreements, flexible load activation, and negotiated pricing agreements with smelter customers.
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Notably, the strategy includes a Bitcoin mining pilot, positioned as a form of flexible industrial load. These initiatives are aimed at stabilising sales at around 178TWh over the medium term, with Eskom projecting potential growth as new products and customer segments come online.
The utility currently has an estimated surplus generation capacity of between 2 gigawatts (GW) and 3GW over the next few years, a reversal from the constrained system margins of recent years, which it says introduces new risks to revenue and asset utilisation even as it eases supply pressure.
Credit: Business Tech
On the security side, Eskom said it has migrated its Online Vending System (OVS), the platform used to generate prepaid electricity tokens, to a more secure environment. The move is intended to curb the generation of illicit prepaid tokens and reduce associated revenue and energy losses.
Eskom said it is also accelerating the rollout of a new secure vending platform to replace the current system, alongside broader cybersecurity efforts that recorded no “Priority 1” incidents during the financial year.
Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati said the results reflect the utility’s shift “from recovery to transformation,” while group chief executive Dan Marokane said profits we’re being reinvested into infrastructure and the technologies driving Eskom’s decarbonisation efforts.
The utility’s capital expenditure programme is set to grow from R45 billion annually in FY2026 to over R70 billion annually from FY2029, with total planned investment of R343 billion across the group over the next five years.
