This blog gives you the latest topical news plus some informal comments on them from ShareSoc’s directors and other contributors. These are the personal comments of the authors and not necessarily the considered views of ShareSoc. The writers may hold shares in the companies mentioned. You can add your own comments on the blog posts, but note that ShareSoc reserves the right to remove or edit comments where they are inappropriate or defamatory.

Bulb Collapse, Telecom Plus Results and FCA Globo Action

Yesterday energy supplier Bulb collapsed and was put into Special Administration. Bulb has 1.7 million customers and is the largest of 20 alternative energy suppliers to go bust recently. Most of their customers have been taken on by other suppliers but apparently nobody was willing to take on Bulb’s so effectively the company has been nationalised.

These companies have all been hit by the rapid rise in gas prices while the price cap imposed by Ofgem meant they could not raise their prices to their customers. Established suppliers such as Telecom Plus (TEP) consistently complained that the newer energy suppliers were building a customer base by selling at less than cost and the irrational price cap proved to be their undoing. Forcing businesses to fix their customer prices when input prices are based on market whims is a recipe for financial disaster in any market.

Coincidentally Telecom Plus, which I hold, published their half-year results this morning. They are a likely beneficiary from suppliers disappearing from the market. They reported “Net customer growth in October of over 15,000 and they are expecting around 10% growth in customer base during H2 with double-digit annual percentage growth thereafter”. There is always someone who benefits from financial disasters.

They also made these comments:

“Over twenty energy companies have ceased trading since the summer, leaving over two million customers dependent on the safety net provided by the market regulator, Ofgem, to maintain their supplies and protect their credit balances through the Supplier of Last Resort (SOLR) mechanism.  These corporate failures take the total number of suppliers that have exited the market in the past five years to over 50, with further failures expected over the coming months.

Whilst primarily blamed on rising wholesale prices, this catalogue of failures, and the associated billions of pounds of costs that will ultimately be borne by consumers, reflect a regulatory regime that encouraged a clearly unsustainable ‘race-to-the-bottom’ approach to competition.  The resultant price war has eroded consumer trust and caused significant financial detriment, as the cost of these failures will need to be recouped through higher energy bills over the coming years.

Ofgem’s recent open letter to energy suppliers is therefore a welcome statement of intent to reform the regulatory framework towards one that genuinely fosters sustainability, investment, good service and fair competition amongst properly resourced and differentiated suppliers.

It is clear that the retail energy market has undergone a paradigm shift, bringing an end to the unsustainable practices which had become widespread over the last seven years of selling energy below cost to attract new customers, using customer credit balances as working capital, and failing to accrue for regulated renewable obligation payments.

In that environment, it stands to reason that an established, well-capitalised energy supplier benefiting from a sustainable cost advantage that is derived from bringing consumers a highly differentiated ‘all your home services in one’ proposition, should thrive.   As the dust settles on the prolonged energy market price war, we believe we are better positioned than ever to grow our market share significantly over the coming months and years”.

Other news today is a report in the Financial Times that the FCA have filed an action in the High Court against the former CEO and CFO of Globo (GBO). That company collapsed in 2015 after the accounts were shown to be a complete work of fiction with the claimed cash on the balance sheet non-existent and revenue also fictitious. It was a similar case to the more recent one of Patisserie Valerie also audited by Grant Thornton. The FRC declined to take action over the audit of Globo but it is good to hear that after so many years the FCA is finally taking some action.

As a former shareholder in Globo I have an interest in this matter and did provide some information to the FCA but there has been no contact from them since 2019. I am trying to find out more about the nature of the legal action now pursued (there is nothing on the FCA web site).

Globo well demonstrates the weakness of UK audits, the poor enforcement by the FRC and FCA, the lack of transparency over what they are doing and the length of time it takes for those bodies to take action.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

One comment
  1. ali haouas says:

    thanks Roger would be intresteed in any further comments on this

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