The evolution of profit margins in the energy sector in selected EU countries

Abstract

The aim of this article is to verify the hypothesis of the occurrence of increased profit margins in the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply industry in an environment of increased CPI inflation rates in selected countries in the European Union. The study was based on the selected quantitative methods, including: the categorisation of companies by mean and standard deviation, and the Kruskal-Wallis test for non-parametric independent variables. The analysis showed that a clear increase in margins was observed in France and Italy during the 2021 and 2022 periods analysed. The largest increase was found in France, where the median gross profit margin increased from 18.9 per cent between 2015 and 2020 to 25.6 and 26.9 per cent respectively between 2021 and 2022. The study contributes to the assessment of the adaptability of the European Union energy sector and the problematic nature of the phenomenon of increased margins.

Keywords

• greed inflation
• energy sector
• European Union