Npower wins scores of customer as turnaround plan takes hold
An army of UK customers charged back to Npower last month, as the big six energy giant's turnaround efforts began to bear fruit.
RWE Npower was beset by billing problems last year, which left it unable to charge some of its customers. This prompted it to install new senior management and kickstart a restructuring.
Peter Terium, chief executive of RWE, said today that its UK business Npower had won back 200,000 customers in July.
"In the first half of 2016 customer losses decreased significantly compared to the year before. This ran against the trend experienced by most other major energy suppliers," he said in a speech.
Terium contined: "Right now it even looks like we have reached the turning point: the number of contracts we concluded in July is higher than the number of customers we lost in the whole of the first half of the year."
British Gas revealed last month that it lost 400,000 UK customers in the first half of this year.
It came as RWE reported adjusted net income rose 10.1 per cent to €598m in the six months to June, up from €543m a year ago.
The company stuck to its forecast for adjusted net income of €500m to €700m for this year.
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It's had to overcome the German government's shift towards renewable power generation, at the expensive of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Consequently, RWE is hiving off its renewables business Innogy.
RWE said today that it remained on track to IPO 10 per cent of Innogy before the end of this year.
The company's shares closed up 3.88 per cent to €15.60 on the German Dax.