EDP's Q1 2026 Net Profit Falls 12% to €378 Million on a Lower Iberian Wholesale Tape — But Stilwell Lifts Full-Year Guidance 5% to €5.2 Billion EBITDA and €1.3 Billion Profit, and Closes the Door on Miranda Sarmento's Windfall Tax

EDP reported Q1 2026 net profit of €378 million after the close on Wednesday, down 12% from the €428 million Q1 2025 print, and the Thursday tape ran the equity through a contained reaction window with EDP -0.27% and EDP Renováveis -3.68% on the day. The headline-down number ran below the surface of a much stronger picture: recurring net profit rose 9% to €399 million, beating the analyst consensus of €364 million, and CEO Miguel Stilwell de Andrade used the call to lift full-year 2026 guidance by roughly 5%.

The guidance upgrade is the real story

The 2026 EBITDA target moved up to €5.2 billion from the previous €4.9-€5.0 billion range, and the net-profit anchor moved to approximately €1.3 billion from the prior €1.2-€1.3 billion range. Stilwell told analysts the upgrade reflects "a strong start to 2026" with "solid fundamentals across all major businesses and geographies," and pointed specifically at higher reservoir levels on the Iberian hydro book and the expected back-half recovery in realised electricity prices as the post-Hormuz wholesale tape normalises. EDP Renováveis ran an in-line guidance lift to approximately €2.2 billion EBITDA and a €71 million Q1 recurring profit print, up 9%.

Lower Iberian wholesale prices were the headline drag

The Q1 2026 net-profit decline ran almost entirely off lower realised electricity prices through the Iberian wholesale tape — the post-Hormuz-spike normalisation cycle that pushed Brent below $100 on Thursday's session. The lower realised-price line on the EDP Renováveis-consolidated generation book compresses the renewables-heavy revenue mix that has been the structural earnings anchor since the 2024 Iberian generation reset. The Q1 read therefore looks worse than the operational reality: hydro reservoir conditions are favourable, the wind book is operating cleanly, and the data-centre / EV / industrial-electrification demand picture across Iberia and the United States is, on the management read, structurally positive.

The windfall-tax door is closed

The most consequential piece of language in the call was the explicit dismissal of Miranda Sarmento's prospective windfall tax. The Finance Minister confirmed at Monday's Concertação Social that the government would calibrate a special tax on energy-company extraordinary profits using the 2022 Contribuição Solidária Extraordinária base. EDP told analysts on Thursday morning that it has no lucros inesperados base to tax under the proposed 2026 mechanism — language that mirrors the 2022-base reset that had previously taken EDP outside the perimeter of the original Contribuição Solidária Extraordinária. The framing locks in a clean exposure profile into the back half of 2026, and shifts the windfall-tax risk onto the smaller refining and gas-trading lines elsewhere in the Portuguese energy complex.

What this means for foreign residents

• Tariff outlook: EDP's regulated-utility tariff and the EDP Comercial retail rate cards run off a different mechanism than the wholesale price. Lower wholesale prices through the second half flow into the ERSE tariff smoothing for 2027 — a modest unit-bill tail-wind on the regulated side.
• Dividend visibility: The €1.3 billion net-profit anchor and the unchanged dividend policy keep EDP's payout among the most reliable on the PSI for any foreign resident holding the equity through a domestic broker.
• Windfall-tax read-through: The Miranda Sarmento mechanism is now narrower than initially advertised — neither EDP nor (per the Wednesday call) EDP Renováveis sits inside the 2022-base perimeter. The fiscal yield to the Treasury is therefore smaller than the headline policy framing suggested.
• Generation mix: The hydro / wind / solar print at 76% renewable on the Iberian book is the structural read on Portuguese electricity supply. The dependence on imported gas continues to compress on the EDP system.

The full-year 2026 framework is now €5.2 billion EBITDA / €1.3 billion net profit — a clean upgrade against a Q1 print that read poorly on the headline but cleanly on the recurring line. The EDP analyst day runs Friday morning, with the next data point the H1 2026 print in late July.