Centrica Buys Danish Trading Know-How
UK utility Centrica is buying Denmark's Neas Energy for Dkr1.6bn (£170 mn) in cash plus adjustments for cash and net working capital, it said April 21. It expects completion of the deal this summer. Neas reported Ebitda for 2015 of Dkr198mn.
Neas is a provider of energy management and revenue optimisation services and has hundreds of customers who together own 2,500 individual decentralised assets, including windfarms, solar plants and combined heat and power (CHP) plants, with an installed capacity of about 8.6 GW.
Centrica is expanding its route to market services in Europe and Neas has a business model that is complementary to the activities of its own Energy Marketing & Trading team, which trades gas, power and related commodities on behalf of its upstream gas and power assets, it said.
This week it said it would spend some £1bn (€1.27bn) on acquisitions this year, of which about a half would be on exploration and production, but did not say where.
Neas provides expertise in short-term power trading and asset management in northwest Europe, with Centrica’s existing expertise focused on longer-term gas and power trading in the UK and Europe. The transaction also adds enhanced analytics, IT and trading capabilities in continental Europe.
Neas Energy CEO, Bo Rydahl, commented: "Neas will be Centrica’s spearhead for the growth of energy marketing and trading activities on the European continent.”
Centrica CEO Iain Conn said Centrica recognised the trend away from large centralised power generation to decentralised technologies – much of it intermittent renewable generation. The company's strategy includes creating a distributed energy and power team.
“This acquisition will allow us to accelerate our energy marketing and trading growth strategy and serve renewable and distributed energy customers at a wholesale level across Europe,” he said.
As an example of that trend, the German utility E.ON split away at the start of this year from its wholesale activities and long-term contracts with its spin-off of Uniper, to focus on distributed energy, smart grids, and so on.
Earlier this week E.ON announced a deal with the region of Berlin that included gas supply, declining to comment on the volume. Under the deal, the region of Berlin would have a majority stake in the gas grid and there would be a new shareholder structure for the Gasag group -- currently owned by E.ON (36.85%) alongside France's Engie and Sweden's Vattenfall (each with 31.575%). The deal was presented as part of the energy transition, at an urban level. Berlin want to cut CO2 emissions by 85% by 2050.
William Powell