B Gas £2 billion profit shame

1carminestocky

garybuk wrote: »

As above is correct, and they are NOTallowed under our competition laws to sell gas from their storage arm to the residential at anything other than market rates, in fact the companies aren't even allowed to communicate outside of regulated channels due to conflict in interest.

If you want British Gas to make £0 profit and just pay the ~53% tax it pays to the government (yes YOUR F-ing government) go moan to them, old Gordy is laughing his way to the bank. AND there would be very little investment in the national system and you'd have blackouts of Elec & Gas.

They are a private company and are entitled to make a profit.

P.s. all those lovely European companies you are with that hide massive profits in their European arms and get around tax and do everything in their power to restrict the free market of open energy in Europe are doing nothing but taking this country for a ride.

That's the whole point, they sell it at the going wholesale rate (which has been incredibly high over the last year or so). Costs of extraction, i would imagine, wouldn't have risen in a comparable fashion so profit is higher.That means the residential arm 'take the hit' (and can then claim, as joyful has already done, I see, to make a really small profit per customer. It's a nonsense, of course, because with their business model 'split' as it is, when the residential arm is puportedly doing poorly, the extraction arm is generally doing very well. Am I wrong? All explained by the afore-mentioned Mr Collinson on 31/7/2008 when the last set of accounts surfaced:

Just 24 hours after expressing such sincere regrets the group that owns British Gas, Centrica, shovelled £144.6m in dividend payments to shareholders - a 16% increase on the year before.

Customers, it seems, must suffer and take the pain, but shareholders must not. Indeed, they must gain.

Meanwhile, Centrica's boss, with monumental indifference, described the dividend payout as "purely mechanical".

British Gas Residential - what the company likes to call its "downstream" business - may have seen its profits fall, but the "upstream" business - extracting the stuff out of the North Sea - saw its profits balloon from £123m to £638m.

Total profits at the group exceeded the city's expectations by more than £100m.

Bargainetta

I notice that there a few BG employees on this thread - Swanjon, smidgey and Joyful for example. Can I request that someone looks at the electricity prices on Websaver 2 compared with Click 6? Is that being cheeky? If so, I apologise. My area is South East.

moonrakerz

“British Gas £2 Billion profit shame”

I quite agree ! disgraceful ! Ripping off the British consumer !

They should be run like the banks - at a £20B (put in your own figs !) loss, then the Government (the taxpayer) would have to bail them out.

Hang on - I need to think about that one.......................

1carminestocky

Joyful wrote: »

British Gas in the last year have made £1.20 per customer per month! Not such a lot is it.





I work at British Gas

Plushchris

Bargainetta wrote: »

I notice that there a few BG employees on this thread - Swanjon, smidgey and Joyful for example. Can I request that someone looks at the electricity prices on Websaver 2 compared with Click 6? Is that being cheeky? If so, I apologise. My area is South East.

I'm not a BG employee but a quick look on a comparison site and its amazing what you can find ....

Click 6..19.164p for the first 125 kWh per quarter, and 8.783p thereafter

Websaver 2 ... 22.299p for the first 125 kWh per quarter, and 10.221p thereafter

Gas is slightly cheaper on websaver though!

tripled

1carminestocky, I don't fully understand what point you are making - surely if BG sold/wound down their upstream business, then it would just be another company making those profits?

Anyway, their report states that Centrica Energy profits are up 33%. As far as I can establish, the division made 663 million pounds pre-tax in 2007, meaning in 2008 they made 882 million pre-tax. This would be an additional profit of £57.64 before-tax per residential customer, assuming that all those profits were derived from supplying residential customers (which they aren't), also that they don't reinvest any of those profits. Does that give you the figure you are looking for?