British Gas profits

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7256096.stm

"Energy supplier British Gas has reported annual profits of £571m at its residential arm, up from £95m in 2006.
The news came as Centrica, British Gas' parent company, reported a 40% rise in operating profits to £1.95bn"

This news comes just a few weeks after a 15% increase in gas tariffs was announced.

So it seems to me, that whilst British Gas operating profits in other areas have suffered, the general public have suffered 600% increases in their bills to counterbalance it.

An absolute disgrace. Money grabbing scumbags. British Gas aren't the only ones I hasten to add.

how have the general public suffered 600% increases in their bills? I know I havent!


retail prices did actually fall towards the end of the yearperhps not as quickly as the wholesale price, but then the cost increase wasnt passed on either, when it rose previously.

Revenue was down for the year on year, which isnt exactly a sign of growth. customer numbers grew too. what happened was efficiencies in operations, disposals etc and savings made there contributed to better operating costs and hence more profitability.



I do wish the media wouldn't manipulate statistics to make people more frightened or angered about them than they need to be. (regardless of a 15% price hike, which isnt 600%!!) My company was celebrating 100% increase in profits today and everyone is delighted! (That does not mean everyone paying to stay in our hotels are paying 100% more than last year....they might be paying £1 more though)

WormThatTurned wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7256096.stm

"Energy supplier British Gas has reported annual profits of £571m at its residential arm, up from £95m in 2006.
The news came as Centrica, British Gas' parent company, reported a 40% rise in operating profits to £1.95bn"

This news comes just a few weeks after a 15% increase in gas tariffs was announced.

So it seems to me, that whilst British Gas operating profits in other areas have suffered, the general public have suffered 600% increases in their bills to counterbalance it.

An absolute disgrace. Money grabbing scumbags. British Gas aren't the only ones I hasten to add.

Gotta be honest if one of my students produced that sort of analysis and evaluation I would beat them with a board rubber, mind you we have interactive white boards so the rubber is actually an icon but I would verbally beat them. Consider yourself chastised for band wagon jumping.

2006 performance was awful for a company of that size with a market share of 55% so to refer to the % increase in meaningless. All those people who were with themcan easily switch, it takes less than twenty minutes to do on the net, mind you having switched to n-power I actually miss BG as n-power are awful when it comes to setting payment levels.

I dont know how anyone can defend them.

Prices are hugely over inflated. A £475 million hike in profits in one year put down to efficiency/ savings ??? I find that impossible to believe. The profits are needed for investment in green energy - more like a hike in share returns.

The profits they are making are immoral and I would speculate price fixing. I hope Ofgem investigate them and the others.

Immoral? This has been SO badly reported. The published profit is not that huge on the scale of the company, it is just that it is being compared (as stated above) with a TERRIBLE profit from before.

It's the reporting that is immoral on this one, simply looking to grab a headline.

And yes, it can be efficiancy savings as the company was very badly run before. Again, it comes down to perspective and these big numbers are missleading when you consider the scale.

The reason they have such a huge profit is because they are to put away 1 billion per year to invest in the future, wind energy etc, something that I support in theory, but the problem with BG is that we will never know for sure how the profit's are being spent as they are a private company.

Another factor is, if they are spending 1 billion per year for X amount of years for future energy supply, does that mean our energy in the future will be free? No I very much doubt it, just as I very much doubt they are spending the amount they say on the future energy supply.

The great thing about when the market opened up and all these other companies came through was we all thought there was going to be healthy competition, but there just isn't. It is a post code lottery and you could change supplier every so often but these day's you would not be saving more then a few pound.

I will stay with BG. I hate NPower who also are in this area and I like BG billing and find it easy to understand.

The one thing that has really peed me off with BG is the price cuts they are making that the public don't see. Just before I went on maternity leave 9 months ago I had to re-train so I could deal with more then just pre-payment and debt calls, and now I find out that when I go back to work next week my job will only be there till June unless I move to Scotland.

If they have made all these profits and are well known to have a bad record with their customer service line, then why cut jobs even more?!

That's the point though. If part of their expenditure is over £1billion on just that, then their overall expenditure must be massive - making their profits, in proportion, not as big as they look.

Oh, and Scotland is quite nice - we don't pay for dental or optician appointments.......

The big word being "if".

Im sceptical about their £1 million figure and they dont have to explain their spending plans so we will never find out if they do spend this much. And if they are investing heavily then why are the share dividends going up from 13% to 17%.

And as SLB said, will our bills come down when the infrastructure is in place for renewable energy sources to meet our needs ? I doubt it.

I believe we are being ripped off and I believed that before yesterdays press. They could supply gas cheaper than they do and I dont believe their reasons to justify.

Whether or not you agree/believe/whatever with what BG say, ultimately, they do not answer to you, me or pretty much anyone other than the people who have a stake in it.

They are a private company and under the law, they act in the interest of the shareholders.

Thats the annoying thing theres pretty much nothing anyone can do about it. Where I live now its either BG or Eon who are roughly the same per year.

It will be interesting to see what the Ofgem investigation brings up. If it finds problems surely the Competition Commission would get involved ??

WormThatTurned wrote:

Thats the annoying thing theres pretty much nothing anyone can do about it. Where I live now its either BG or Eon who are roughly the same per year.

It will be interesting to see what the Ofgem investigation brings up. If it finds problems surely the Competition Commission would get involved ??

Course you can you switch supplier. Location has nothing to do with it.

Like everything to do with privatisation the customer was never going to benefit because in many cases they were privatising what is effectively a natural monopoly and trying to create competition, ultimately what you get is imperfect competition and no one is happy, the company because of the restrictions on them imposed by regulators and the customer as they resent the private company making any profit.

atticusuk wrote:

WormThatTurned wrote:

Thats the annoying thing theres pretty much nothing anyone can do about it. Where I live now its either BG or Eon who are roughly the same per year.

It will be interesting to see what the Ofgem investigation brings up. If it finds problems surely the Competition Commission would get involved ??

Course you can you switch supplier. Location has nothing to do with it.

.

I went on USwitch - its BG or Eon for me. When I lived in Nthants we had BG/ Npower/ Powergen and Scottish Power to choose from. Location does affect your ability to switch supplier.

drewboy wrote:

Immoral? This has been SO badly reported. The published profit is not that huge on the scale of the company, it is just that it is being compared (as stated above) with a TERRIBLE profit from before.

It's the reporting that is immoral on this one, simply looking to grab a headline.

And yes, it can be efficiancy savings as the company was very badly run before. Again, it comes down to perspective and these big numbers are missleading when you consider the scale.

I completely agree, a terrible bit of reporting, using statistics to scaremonger.

helencbradshaw wrote:

I completely agree, a terrible bit of reporting, using statistics to scaremonger.

I agree with you on this.

It's always sensible to remember the saying which links 'Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics'

It seems im in the minority

Im genuinely surprised how many are quick to defend BG and put it down to scaremongering. When you make record profits after record price hikes I think its inevitable your going to face critisism. Oh well.

It's the poor reporting most of us are objecting to....!

When you ahve that, as is clearly the case here, the rest of the so called facts are meaningless.