Good Energy has seen its gross profit increase by 19.4% during the first six months of 2021, growing to £17.7 million.
This is up from £14.8 million in June 2020, with a gross profit margin of 25.9% in comparison with last year’s 22%. The company’s underlying operating margin also increased to 8.7%, up from 2.3% in June 2020.
Underlying profit before tax grew to £3.9 million, back from a loss of £0.5 million in the first half of 3030. Reported profit before tax was also up, growing to £4.8 million, including non-underlying income of £0.8 million from generation debt restructuring.
This lead to underlying basic earnings per share increasing to 16.4p, with reported earnings per share at 20.5p, up from a loss in June 2020 of 6.6p per share.
Net debt decreased to £36.4 million during the first half of the year, down slightly from last year’s £36.5 million. The company has a gross cash balance of £9 million, less than half of that in June 2020, which includes the repayment of 70% of the Good Energy Bond II in June for £11.9 million.
Good Energy’s strong results have been driven by underlying business growth, which has helped to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. This includes overall customer numbers growing by 1.2% to 274,600, broken down into a 2.6% increase in business customers to 142,900 while domestic customers decreased by 0.3% to 131,700.
“Growth in revenue, profit and customer numbers has underpinned the delivery of key strategic milestones,” said Nigel Pocklington, CEO of Good Energy.
“Good Energy Group is a modern, digital energy company. Our core supply and feed-in tariff business continues to grow whilst we now provide tech-driven, digital products and services in the electric vehicle and ‘energy-as-a-service’ space.”
Today’s half year results point to a number of strategic milestones reached by the supplier, including moving its B2B supply business onto energy software supplier ENSEK’s Ignition platform in 2020 and launching a new EV tariff, offering two overnight off-peak periods to charge at a cheaper rate in July 2020.
Good Energy’s subsidiary Zap-Map also continued to grow, with over 250,000 resgistered users and over 95% of public charging points in the UK now on its network. It has announced partnerships with further charge point users in recent months including GeniePoint, char.gy, Motor Fuel Group, Revive and Mer.
“I believe that this is an exciting time for the group to capitalise on the growing awareness of genuine green products and increasing adoption of EVs,” added Pocklington. “We are ideally positioned to benefit from this trend, through our investment in Zap–Map, the UK’s leading EV mapping service, and our own EV products and services.”
In July, competitor Ecotricity made a bid for Good Energy, issuing an offer of 340p per share for the entire issue of its share capital. The company’s board has repeatedly criticised the “highly opportunistic and hostile offer”, arguing that it undervalues Good Energy.
