Support our sponsors:

NZX 50 Index	3326.74	2.10
S&P/ASX 200	4282.90	7.80
Dow Jones Industrials	12884.00	5.80

Twitter

Facebook

RSS

Boost for Contact's customer numbers

Wednesday 17th February 2010

Text too small?

Contact Energy's electricity and gas customer numbers rose by 3,500 in January, suggesting the company's efforts to stem the tide of defections since late 2008 are starting to work.

Contact electricity customer numbers peaked at 529,000 customers in late 2008, but plummeted throughout last year after negative publicity for directors' fee and tariff increases, reaching a low-point in December last year of 478,000 customers, a level not seen since 2002.

That total rose 3000 to 481,000 last month, while gas customers rose by 500 to 65,000.

Contact's 2008 blunder coincided with the emergence of a spate of aggressive competition from state-owned competitors, most notably the retail arm of MightyRiverPower, Mercury Energy. While competitive activity has been subdued since the announcement of electricity reforms by Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee before Christmas, the arrival of Genesis Energy in South Island retail markets produced new competitive offers for Contact customers in Dunedin last week.

Contact spokesman Jonathan Hill said the company was "competing hard for every customer" with door-to-door customer acquisition campaigns and the introduction of new discounts for online customers and those taking a combination of both electricity and gas, or LPG.

LPG customer numbers were static at 56,000 in January, although LPG has been an area of customer growth in the last year, as Contact integrates the Rockgas LPG business into its mainstream retail offerings.

Businesswire.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name:
Your email:	Not displayed to the public
Comment:
Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved.

Printable version

Get quotes for Contact Energy Limited Ordinary Shares (CEN)

NZX Annoucements for CEN

25 Jan 2012	MONTHLY: CEN: December 2011 Operational Data & HY Results Announcement
18 Jan 2012	GENERAL: CEN: CEN completes disposal of 25% interest in Oakey

Contact Energy Limited Ordinary Shares

Intra-day

3 month

1 year

2 year