Second Opinion Runsten Nätföretagens Vinster (2026)

Title: Runsten om nätföretagens vinster Publisher note: Second Opinion Nyheter AB, run on commission for Energiföretagen Sverige Interview: with Mikael Runsten (ekon. dr, Handelshögskolan i Stockholm) Language: Swedish

Explainer-format interview (not a DEBATT opinion piece) unpacking why headline DSO operating-margin figures (20–35%) are a misleading basis for the “windfall profits” critique of Swedish grid companies, and why the NUAV (nuanskaffningsvärde — current replacement cost) valuation method used in Swedish revenue-cap regulation exists. Written in the context of a government assignment tasking Ei with analysing DSO profits, investment, and returns. Note on source status: Second Opinion ceased publishing 1 July 2026; see Swedish DSO Landscape for the profitability context this connects to.

Key claims

Three “misunderstandings” Runsten identifies in the public profitability critique:

1. High operating margin ≠ high profitability. Comparing a DSO’s operating margin (rörelsemarginal) directly to a low-capital-intensity business like ICA is invalid — a DSO must own billions of kronor in lines, transformer stations, cables, and meters, all of which must be financed, and financing cost is not itself deducted before the margin is calculated (it’s what the margin has to cover). A SEK 1bn profit on SEK 10bn of assets is a 10% return; the same profit on SEK 25bn of assets is 4% — margin alone says nothing about which situation applies. This is why capital-intensive-business analysis uses return-on-capital-employed / return-on-assets rather than operating margin.

2. Return-on-assets can still mislead if the asset valuation used is wrong. If regulation targets ~4–5% return and a company reports 9–12%, that alone still looks like overearning — but the answer depends entirely on what asset value the ratio is computed against.

3. Old assets create the illusion of overearning under historical-cost accounting. Standard financial statements value infrastructure at original purchase/construction cost. Many Swedish grid assets are decades old, still in use, but heavily depreciated in the books — so their book value sits far below what an equivalent asset would cost to build today. Runsten’s worked example: two identical houses, one bought recently for 4M SEK, one bought decades ago for 1M SEK; rented at the same market rate, the cheaply-bought house looks far more “profitable” purely because of when it was acquired — same mechanism distorts apparent DSO profitability when computed on historical book value.

Why Swedish regulation uses NUAV instead: Ei’s revenue-cap regulation does not use historical book values — it uses nuanskaffningsvärde (NUAV), i.e. what an equivalent grid would cost to build today, age-adjusted. The stated rationale: a DSO should earn a return on what the grid is worth today, not on 30–40-year-old construction costs. Runsten frames this as the reason profitability looks systematically different once NUAV is applied instead of book value.

Runsten’s actual position (not a defense of all DSO pricing): he does not claim all DSO tariffs are justified or that windfall profits never occur — only that determining whether a given company is genuinely overearning requires (a) accounting for capital intensity, (b) relating profit to capital employed, and (c) scrutinizing how that capital is valued. “Det är lätt att hitta siffror som ser ut som överlönsamhet. Det är betydligt svårare att avgöra om det faktiskt är det.”

Investment-signal warning: sustained weak profitability, or even the threat of it, makes continued investment difficult to justify economically — i.e. the flip side of the overearning critique is an underinvestment risk if regulation overcorrects.

Relationship to existing wiki topics