Eon has overtaken SSE as Britain’s second largest household energy supplier. The German-owned energy group said that it was the only one of the Big Six suppliers not to lose customers over the past year and had put on about 50,000 accounts in the year to end of June. Yesterday it said that its UK customer business had made profits of €202 million in the first half of 2018, down from €230 million a year earlier. Eon had 15,000 more customer accounts than SSE as of the end of April, according to Cornwall Insight, an energy consultancy. The two companies do not disclose strictly comparable numbers, but the most recent data submitted to Ofgem showed the gap narrowing, with Eon having 6.2 million domestic gas and electricity customers accounts at the end of December, while SSE had 6.5 million at the end of March. Eon has since added customers, whereas SSE has said that it lost more customers in the three months to June. Eon’s lead is likely to be short-lived, however, as SSE plans to merge with Npower by the end of the year. The new merged supplier would be comfortably the second largest and would vie with British Gas for the title of Britain’s biggest. It would have more electricity customer accounts than British Gas, but fewer gas accounts.
Times 9th Aug 2018 read more »
