Outlook

The main management guidelines provide for organic growth in Italy and the consolidation of the Company’s presence in Europe, with the objective of improving supply security, flexibility and the quality of service of the entire gas system.

Gas demand

According to the most recent estimates, demand for natural gas in Italy between 2015 and 2018 will remain more or less unchanged from 2014 levels.

Investments

Snam is going ahead with a significant investment plan involving a total of around €5.1 billion at group level for the 2015-2018 period. The main investment plan guidelines for the Company’s business segments are as follows:

Transportation

• Increased flexibility and security of the transportation system in Italy;
• Ongoing improvements to the quality of the transportation service;
• Increased interconnection between infrastructures and greater flexibility of gas flows in Europe.

Over the period in question, the planned investments should allow the Company to extend the total length of the transportation network (32,339 km in 2014) by around 3% and to increase the installed power in the compression stations by around 15% (approximately 894 Megawatts in 2014).

Regasification

Investments in 2015 are expected to be in line with those for 2014.

Storage

The projects included in the plan, which are intended to improve the overall flexibility and security of the system, will deliver an increase in storage capacity (11.4 billion standard cubic metres in 2014) of about 11% over the period in question and an increase of around 8% in delivery point capacity (281 million standard cubic metres per day in 2014).

Distribution

The planned interventions will allow the Company to continue to support the development of the business in accordance with the following guidelines:

• selectively manage the portfolio of concessions in order to maximise profitability;
• make ongoing improvements to the level of safety, reliability and quality of the service;
• continue to increase the number of end users.

Efficiency

Snam will continue to focus on operating efficiency in 2015, through initiatives that will enable it to keep the level of controllable fixed costs more or less stable in real terms, on a constant-size basis.