Enron Corp. announced an increase in net income of 34% to $338million during the first quarter. Earnings grew by 40 cents perdiluted share. The company also had a 72% increase in revenues to$13.1 billion for the first quarter. The results excludenon-recurring items.

Enron’s wholesale group increased income before interest,minority interests and taxes (IBIT) by 31% to $419 million comparedto $320 million in the same period last year. Physical volumes grewto 41.8 trillion Btue/d in the first quarter from 29.3 trillionBtue/d. Physical deliveries of natural gas increased 53% to 23.5trillion Btue/d. Power volumes grew 28% to 111 million megawatthours. Volumes increased in all commodities in every region whereEnron operates, the company said. “The results reflect increasinglystrong natural gas and power businesses in North America and Europeand the extremely positive response of wholesale customers aroundthe world to Enron’s new e-commerce platform, EnronOnline.”

Enron Energy Services reported revenues of $642 million and IBITof $16 million in the first quarter compared to $370 million ofrevenues and a $31 million loss in the first quarter of last year.

“Enron continues to lead the industry leveraging scalable andcapital un-intensive networks to generate highly profitablesolutions to customers needs,” said PaineWebber analyst Ron Baronein a research note. “Its strategy is simple: 1) identify a marketopportunity early; 2) deploy material resources from itsintellectually fueled networks to secure a dominant marketposition; 3) generate sizable transactional volumes to realize fullnetwork economies; 4) achieve and maintain attractive margins; 5)contribute bottom-line earnings contributions as soon aspractically possible; and ultimately 6) achieve superior stockprice performance…..

“Now, Enron’s eyes are focused on expanding its onlineinitiatives beyond energy marketing (examples include bandwidth andcredit monitoring). In addition, the company is simultaneouslyexecuting a multi-faceted broadband strategy aimed at staking aleading position in the burgeoning bandwidth marketplace.”

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