Good Energy made further inroads into business energy supply in 2019, with B2B accounts outnumbering domestic customers for the first time.
Posting full year results, the company said it would push further into the sector by bundling commercial electric vehicle EV charging for businesses with clean energy.
Unaudited results released this morning show that the firm’s sales in 2019 rose 6.3 per cent to £124.3 million. Development costs related to Kraken, a customer management system, pushed pre-tax profits on continuing operations down 8 per cent to £2.1 million. A full year dividend of 3.7 pence per ordinary share was declared.
Across all categories, business accounts rose 4.9 per cent among Good Energy’s total roster of 266,000 accounts, itself a net rise of 2.5 per cent. While home supply accounts dropped 8 per cent, business supply customers, mainly SMEs, rose by 33 per cent, the firm said.
Chief executive Juliet Davenport suggested its B2B push is a win-win: businesses are trying to do something about climate change, while the non-domestic market affords the energy supplier “greater stability, longer term contracts and more certain revenues”.
Over the year, the company ‘soft launched’ OnePoint, its EV charging infrastructure division, plus phased investments in EV chargepoint mappers ZapMap. This month Good Energy will pay the final tranche of its £1.07 million total investment, securing with an option to secure 50.1 per cent majority control. Products for fleet operators in EV charging information will follow later this year, said Davenport, with the Zap Pay app, which enables drivers to use multiple charging networks via one app, coming “soon”.
In domestic supply Good Energy intends to avoid the price war afflicting many retailers, with Davenport claiming that the Kraken platform would add value to householders.
Energy-as-a-service across all sectors continues as Good Energy’s goal. “Our vision of the energy sharing future is one in which we will no longer simply be selling energy but selling the services that enable energy sharing,” said Davenport.
Today’s results coincided with Good Energy confirming the renewal of its three-year contract with Ørsted for wind-generated power from the North Sea. The deal guarantees the retailer 12 per cent of output from the Danish firm’s 210MW Westermost Rough farm off Grimsby, plus an option to take 28 per cent by 2022. Future cooperation in services and generation was also flagged.
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