Bulb Energy reports HUGE £23million+ annual loss! (and late)

wavelets

From financial reports recently filed with Companies House, Bulb Energy incurred almost £24million in losses last year alone.

Key figures are as follows:

Bulb Energy Ltd (08469555)
For the year ending 31 March 2018
The company made a loss of £23,717,267 (2017: £1,984,711)
Net liabilities of the company stood at £26,465,165 (2017: £2,747,898)

Bulb Energy attempt to hide nowadays behind a holding company, Simple Energy, who at 31 March 2018 held 100% of Bulb Energy.
Simple Energy's principle activity is as the holding company of Bulb Energy, so no surprise that their accounts show similar HUGE losses

Simple Energy Ltd (09249540)
For the year ending 31 March 2018
The Group made an overall loss of £23,713,915 (7 month period 2017: £2,216,938)
Net liabilities of the Group stood at £19,889,090 (2017: £2,004,480)

In view of disparaging comments made about other companies who are late filing their annual reports with the relevent authority, perhaps it should be mentioned that both these sets of financial accounts were filed over 1 week after the usual 9 months permitted. i.e. late.

Whether you agree with others comments that filing accounts late shows the company's inability to even get the basics right is perhaps debateable, but as both sets of accounts were signed off by the directors on 19-Oct-2018, and the independent audit reports signed off 3 days thereafter, it would seem that there was no good cause and both these companies that are hemorrhaging money will now incur additional penalties for being late filing.

(I know the penalties are small in comparison to the losses posted, but when you have no money, every penny counts)

The full accounts of both companies are available from Companies House.

beardiedog

Not very encouraging news.

I guess another price hike is imminent then?

borkid

beardiedog wrote: »

Not very encouraging news.

I guess another price hike is imminent then?

We've recently received an email saying they are dropping prices, well the standing charge by £26 per year. At least there isn't a penalty fee for changing supplier if prices do rise a lot.

wavelets

beardiedog wrote: »

Not very encouraging news.

I guess another price hike is imminent then?

I don't think they have too much room for manoeuvre due to Ofgem imposing a price cap on supplier's variable tariffs.

April maybe? ... if they are still going by then.

The_Green_Hornet

MSE are still pushing people towards them.

https://clubs.moneysavingexpert.com/cheapenergyclub/register?isCollectiveSwitchRegistration=true&target=%2Fcheapenergyclub%2Fresults%3Futm_term%3D08-Jan-19-479-5%26utm_campaign%3Dnt-oneliners-one%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3DMSE_Newsletter%26utm_content%3D1

apt

Not surprised they are losing money if they are handing out 2x £100 to gain new customers.

Will_at_Bulb

The numbers can look alarming at first glance, but we're in a very stable financial position. We've also made no attempt to hide this. In fact, we posted a blog post about this last month and made a press release to a number of journalists too.

Here's a link to the blog post: https://bulb.co.uk/blog/annual-update-for-members-2018

Losses don't tell the full story. We invested all that money in growth, something we're unashamed to have done. The more people that join Bulb, the greener the UK becomes and the more people save on their energy. That's why Bulb exists.

Since January 2018, we've grown from 200,000 members to 870,000 members. We have to pay each time someone joins us through a referral or through a comparison site like MSEs Cheap Energy Club. We'll then recoup that cost over a few years when that member has been with us for a while.

We fund this growth by raising capital periodically. We raised £60million this summer, recognition of how solid our business plan is, and we'll use this to continue to grow and to build more technology to give our members an even better service.

Simple Energy was what we called ourselves before we'd come up with the name Bulb. Once we'd named ourselves it made sense for us to have our company name as Bulb. We've never attempted to hide behind Simple Energy. Whenever anyone's asked how to look things up on Companies House on our community we've been happy to point the way.

Hope this help clear a few things up,
Will

wavelets

Will_at_Bulb wrote: »

The numbers can look alarming at first glance, but we're in a very stable financial position. ..

Now where have we seen comments like that before? Oh yeah, here...

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5947581/economy-energy-a-short-history

:cool:

spadoosh

Saw this post this morning and had a look through. Whilst i appreciate massive losses arent typically good i must admit i thought theyve got to be expected when a new company breaks on to the energy sector. Theyre competing with the like of BG in a very price led industry.

Its a kin to tesla breaking in to the motor industry. You just dont make an impact trying to turn a profit on car 1. Nor do you make a profit on customer no1.

Bulb are offering something that others wherent, like tesla, the customers wanted it, which is why theyve been so successful. But they are competing in pretty much locked out markets, that hardest part is opening the door. They do that by getting loads of customers, they do that by making little money (if any) on them.

At the moment theyre reliant on faith. The faith of customers to stick around.


From what ive read of Bulb (having never read/heard much before this post), 4 years ago it was a dude at home getting peed off at his energy bills. Nearly a million customers 4 years later is very good, well theyre certainly offering something people want anyway.

Xbigman

So they are losing £25(ish) per customer on average tariffs around £900ish (IIRC) whilst growing the business.
Generally that's not an issue.




Darren

wavelets

Will_at_Bulb wrote: »

...

Simple Energy was what we called ourselves before we'd come up with the name Bulb. Once we'd named ourselves it made sense for us to have our company name as Bulb. ...

That's not what the records show.

Simple Energy Ltd (09249540)
Date of Incorporation: 06/10/2014
Previous Names: No previous name information has been recorded over the last 20 years.

Whereas


Bulb Energy Ltd (08469555)
Date of Incorporation: 02/04/2013
Previous Names:
Date of change Previous Name 06/10/2015 HANBURY ENERGY LIMITED 02/06/2015 REGENT POWER LIMITED

The two current directors of what is now known as Bulb Energy since October 2015, were both the founding members of Simple Energy back in October 2014. If only a different name was required, they could have changed the name of Simple Energy to Bulb Energy, rather than, as was the case, they were appointed directors of what is now called Bulb Energy in March/April 2015 and changed the name of that 6 months later.

It seems that Bulb Energy has no employees; all employees work for Simple Energy who in turn then bill their subsidiary company for that labour.

So if/when Bulb Energy does cease trading, the employees are not necessarily immediately dismissed as a result, and you would have all the same staff available to start selling energy by another company.