Energy winners: Octopus, Drax and the Czech Sphinx
Never let a good crisis go to waste – a message fully absorbed by challenger power supplier Octopus, which has been slinking through the chaos wrapping “tentacles” around dead and ailing rivals, said Mark Kleinman on Sky News. Reported to be exploring a bid for Bulb Energy and its 1.7 million customers, Octopus has already sucked in 580,000 “stranded” Avro customers, taking its total to 3.1 million. Now the UK’s fifth-biggest supplier, the green tech specialist has proved adept at pulling in cash from big names, said The Daily Telegraph. Octopus crowned the week by announcing $600m in backing from former US vice-president Al Gore’s sustainable investment fund.
Gore’s 13% stake values Octopus at around $4.6bn. That puts it up there with “market leader Centrica, owner of British Gas”, said Nathalie Thomas in the FT. Not bad for a still loss-making start-up first powered up in 2016. Founder CEO Greg Jackson argues the crisis has “highlighted the need for investment in renewables and technologies” – handy for Octopus’s green energy software platform, Kraken, which is licensed to “a string of energy groups globally” including Origin, South Korea’s Hanwha and E.on.
Another big winner, said Jillian Ambrose in The Guardian, is Drax, whose largely biomass-fuelled electricity has been selling “at record market prices”. Shares in the FTSE 250 group hit their highest level “in almost seven years”, adding “half a billion pounds” to Drax’s value. The prize for best individual performance, meanwhile, may belong to Daniel Kretínský, the Praguebased tycoon “known as the Czech Sphinx for his inscrutability”, said Jamie Nimmo in The Sunday Times. In March, when Kretínský quietly acquired Hampshire’s Humbly Grove gas storage facility – one of only eight in the country – gas was selling for 22p/therm. Last week? 185p.