Ecotricity’s upped offer for Good Energy has led shareholders to sell just 2.5% of shares.
Ecotricity originally offered 340p per share when it made its cash offer for Good Energy in July, with this equivalent to £45.3 million. It later upped this to 400p per share after receiving acceptances for just 1.8% of Good Energy’s shares.
Following this, it has now received valid acceptances of 411,523 Good Energy shares, equivalent to around 2.5%. As it already owned around 25.1%, this takes its stake in the company to around 27.5%.
The company made its bid for Good Energy following three indicative offers of 310p per share, 330p per share and 340p per share, all three of which were rejected by Good Energy’s board.
Indeed, Good Energy has maintained that the 340p offer “materially undervalues” the company, and has described Ecotricity as an “unfit owner with an unsuitable plan“.
Its chief objections surround Ecotricity’s financial performance, as well as Ecotricity’s belief that the two can compete more effectively together as genuinely green suppliers in a market of similar-looking products, something which Good Energy’s chair Will Whitehorn has said the company is already “effectively doing by itself”.
Good Energy has also criticised Ecotricity’s corporate governance, for which it has provided “very little insight” into the company said, as well as its customer service ratings.
This bears some similarity to comments made by Ecotricity about Good Energy in 2017, when Ecotricity’s founder Dale Vince launched a bid to appoint himself to the board of Good Energy, citing corporate governance concerns surrounding contracts exchanged between the supplier’s then-chief executive Juliet Davenport and her husband. However, the bid was later dropped.
Current± has contacted both Good Energy and Ecotricity for comment.