Consolidated external costs

In 2018, the Group’s consolidated external costs totalled about 1.92 billion Euros (+8.5% compared to 2017). The highest costs amongst these, equal to about 1.40 billion Euros (1.31 billion in 2017), concern purchase of energy and gas and secondly the costs for services affect for about 264 million Euros (approx. +4.4% compared to 2017). Also worthy of note were the higher operating expenses, which include contingent liabilities due to energy items from previous years and the administrative fine imposed by the antitrust authority.

Below we describe the procurement of goods, services and works managed by several companies in the Group, by the Purchases and Logistics Function of the Holding company. For the scope being analysed, including all the companies representing the Group’s activity and consistent with past disclosures, such procurements had a value in 2018 of about 974 million Euros.