Saudi Arabian utility developer ACWA Power posted a net profit of SAR 389.9 million ($104 million) after zakat and tax for Q2 2022, a 27% higher than in the year-ago period.

The growth was mostly driven by higher share of net results of equity accounted investees, lower impairments and higher other income, the Tadawul-listed company said in a bourse filing on Thursday.

These were partly offset by an increase in Zakat and tax charge mainly due to higher deferred tax expense as a result of devaluation of the Moroccan dirham against the USD, said ACWA Power.

The effort missed most expectations. Financial data provider Refinitiv had calculated a mean analysts’ estimate of SAR 416 million.

Revenue came in a shade higher year-on-year (YoY) at SAR 1.29 billion.

Paddy Padmanathan, CEO and Vice Chairman, said following a slow start to the year due to unexpected global geopolitical and economic disturbances, he was glad to see “acceleration in the bidding space”.

“While we are in the process of bid preparation and submission for the competitive 500MW PV IPP in Uzbekistan and 600,000 m3 per day Rabigh 4 IWP in Saudi Arabia in response to requests for

proposal put forward by the respective offtakers, we submitted in Saudi Arabia for the PIF’s evaluation a proposal for the development of the next mega renewable energy projects in the PIF Renewable Energy deployment pipeline,” he said.