LONDON (Reuters) - Centrica (L:CNA) will cut around 10 percent of its workforce and sell up to 1 billion pounds worth of upstream and wind assets by 2017 as Britain's largest utility looks to focus on energy supply and services.
The owner of energy supplier British Gas reported a three percent fall in first-half adjusted operating profit to 1 billion pounds on Thursday, meeting expectations.
It also announced plans to ramp up services offerings such as helping large business implement energy saving measures such as installing energy-efficient light bulbs.
Many European utilities are looking for new strategies as their decades-old model of centralised, predictable energy production and consumption grapples with falling power prices and reduced consumption.
Under a cost-saving drive the company will shed 6,000 jobs from its nearly 37,500 staff but expects to create 2,000 jobs in new business areas.
It did not specify which areas the cuts would come from.
Cost-cutting measures are expected to save around 750 million pounds a year by 2020, it said.
New chief executive, former BP (LONDON:BP) man Iain Conn, said the North Sea would remain the focus of Centrica's upstream operations.
It signalled that it no longer sees its Canadian operations as core to the business and reiterated plans to sell upstream assets in Trinidad and Tobago.
Centrica owns a number of producing assets in Canada, most notably a 60 percent stake in gas fields in Alberta which it bought in 2013 for C$1 billion (494 million pounds).
Conn said Centrica had made solid progress in reducing the company's net debt and strengthening its balance sheet.
He said it was now "well placed to compete materially against the emerging long-term trends in global energy markets".
Centrica will also invest 250 million pounds over the next five years to expand its North American retail business. Some analysts had expected the company to consider selling parts of that business.
The company's nuclear assets, a 20 percent stake in EDF Energy, the British subsidiary of France's EDF (PA:EDF), will be retained.
The group reduced its interim dividend by 30 percent to 3.57 pence, as announced earlier.
Analysts were broadly positive about the planned changes for the company.
"Centrica's management have at least now given shareholders a plausible business plan that offers a chance that the business can survive," said Peter Atherton, a utility analyst at investment bank Jefferies.
Shares were down 2.7 percent at 267 pence at 0840 GMT.
