UK's Centrica hits one-year high on stock buyback plan, 2025 forecast

(Reuters) -British Gas owner Centrica unveiled a 500-million-pound (nearly $630 million) share buyback plan on Thursday as it stuck to its forecasts for the current year, driving its shares to their highest in over a year.

The company has been trying to adapt to an evolving energy ecosystem that is increasingly focusing on green ambitions and it has a 4-billion-pound investment plan to build infrastructure and expand capacity to cater to varying demands from homes to businesses.

"Centrica has been transformed in recent years and most of our businesses delivered against our medium-term expectations two years ahead of schedule," CEO Chris O'Shea said in a statement announcing the company's 2024 results.

Its 2024 adjusted operating profit of 1.55 billion pounds topped analysts' average estimate of 1.54 billion pounds, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Its shares had surged as much as 10% to about 150 pence by 1028 GMT and were the biggest gainer on London's blue-chip FTSE 100 index.

Half of Centrica's planned 4 billion pounds in capital investments has been committed, with the rest to be invested prioritising returns over scale, it said.

The company, which operates Britain's largest gas storage site in Rough, has said it could spend 2 billion pounds to upgrade the site and is also looking at an investment in Britain's planned Sizewell C nuclear power plant.

O'Shea said Centrica is "absolutely involved in that process" on Sizewell C but any financial commitment would depend on the overall cost and returns.

"I'm really hopeful that we can make progress on Sizewell C this year. But the terms have got to be right because I'm not going to commit Centrica money to something that isn't going to give us the returns that we need."

Centrica also said it signed a 15-year LNG supply deal with Petrobras and that it had concluded a review of its pension schemes to determine deficits. ($1 = 0.7940 pounds)

(Reporting by Raechel Thankam Job and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Savio D'Souza)