 shares fell considerably on Thursday, after its British Gas business lost 823,000 customers in the last four months.){kind=link}
Centrica (LON:CNA) shares fell considerably on Thursday, after its British Gas business lost 823,000 customers in the last four months.
The UK’s largest energy provider lost nearly 6 percent of its account base from July to October, after a series of energy price hikes sending customers elsewhere.
British Gas said full-year earnings per share are expected to be lower than market expectations, as a result to lower than expected profit across its North American and the UK arm of its businesses.
According to the update, the energy supplier expects to report full year adjusted operating profit of around £80 million in its North America unit.
In addition, it is set to incur a one-off post-tax charge of £46 million regarding “a reassessment of the historic recognition of unbilled power revenues”.
Meanwhile, it expects its UK business to “broadly break-even” for the year, despite a persistently tough market climate.
British Gas will still remain the UK’s largest provider with a total of 13.1 million accounts, just ahead of npower and SSE’s (LON:SSE) merge of a 11.5 million accounts.
Iain Conn, Centrica group chief executive, said:
“Although some aspects of our delivery in the second half of 2017 have been disappointing, I remain encouraged by our progress in implementing our strategy.
He added: “The balance sheet has been materially strengthened, and we continue to focus on improving our underlying performance. We have also provided a broad and definitive set of proposals this week to improve the UK energy market for customers and look forward to engaging with the government and regulator in the coming weeks.”
This follows the UK government’s pursuit of energy tarriff caps, to counteract rising prices for consumers.
The Draft Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariffs Cap) Bill will transfer the power to energy regulator Ofgem to cap standard variable tariffs.
Shares in Centrica are currently trading down 16.78 percent as of 10.55AM (GMT), as the market reacts to the news.
Similarly, the news other energy provider shares downwards, with SEE power currently down 2.49 percent.