06.03.2020

CEO's review 2019: From gas company to energy company – Cleaner energy in every way

Gasum’s operating environment faced many changes in 2019. Following a long period of preparations, the opening up of the Finnish gas market was finalized during the year and wholesale trade in gas and the gas transmission network were unbundled
from each other on January 1, 2020.

The year 2019 saw both a parliamentary election in Finland and European elections throughout the European Union, with the run-ups to the elections featuring heated debate on climate change and energy sector themes. The importance of biogas and the circular economy as part of solutions to the acute challenges relating to climate was emphasized after the elections, and the role played by gas is now increasing in Finland as well as other countries such as Sweden, particularly in those sectors where emission rates are the highest, namely road and maritime transport and industry.

Last year was a year of huge leaps of change for Gasum, too. For several years, we have been building Gasum into an energy company making it possible for our customers to access cleaner energy on land and at sea. In 2019, this journey became in many ways more a reality in our everyday lives – our strategy of focusing on the development of the Nordic gas market and energy infrastructure is being implemented at a great pace.

Our determined work to achieve change also meant that we reached our financial targets set for 2019. The Group’s revenue totaled €1,128 million, down 4.2% year on year. The decline in revenue was caused primarily by the development in the sales price of gas. Our operating profit was €141.4 million, up 13.9% year on year. Concluded in 2018, our acquisition of the energy industry expert company Enegia positioned us strongly among energy market service providers in 2019. We also announced our acquisition of AGA’s Clean Energy business and Nauticor’s Marine Bunkering business from Linde AG last year. Once completed, the transaction will create a platform for an even broader offering of low-emission energy solutions in response to growing demand among industrial, maritime and road transport customers. In early 2019, we sold our subsidiary Gasum Tekniikka Oy to the industrial maintenance partner Viafin Service Oyj, which has continued the active development of gas-sector maintenance services.

For us all this has meant not only having assumed a bigger role in the energy sector as a whole but also being involved in the transformation of the entire society towards a carbon-neutral future. Our role as an enabler of emission cuts has been recognized especially in heavy-duty transport, maritime transport and industry – exactly where emissions are the highest. This strengthens our role as a bridge to a carbon-neutral future.

A big thank you goes to all of our customers. We want to serve our customers even better as a comprehensive energy company. On a daily basis, we get to enable decisions made by them on more sustainable solutions. A significant part of living up to this role is our continuous development of circular economy solutions and innovations: every single day, 2,000,000 kg of waste is recycled via us and provided a new life as biogas.

Big thanks are due for this and all of our other cooperation to our partners, such as Kesko and IKEA, together with whom we can do good for society and also provide consumers with access to more sustainable solutions. None of the work to achieve change carried out
in recent years or the huge steps forward taken by us in 2019 would not have been possible without our motivated and professional people at Gasum, who have been ready to embrace change and have been making change a reality every day in their own
work. Many new faces have joined us, and we have all learned a lot from each other over the year.

I would like to thank our personnel: change is brought about together, and I am very happy about us having already progressed far thanks to the contributions of all of you. Our journey to become a full-fledged energy company still continues.

Johanna Lamminen
Chief Executive Officer