Octopus Tracker

MP1995

BarelySentientAI said:

MP1995 said:

stripling said:

What? Prove what?
I've been on Tracker for years, since the very 1st version - it went sky high multiple times.
Hedge fund? 🤦🏻‍♀️ Go read.... 
Platform company? 🤦🏻‍♀️ Check their annual reports and how much Kraken earns them around the planet. 
It's my job to keep an eye on these things but seriously, it's not rocket science. 
That's your lot - I think you are suffering a serious dose of fan boy-itis. The only cure is pain. 🫢😂

As a company yes they are recently (last few years bouyant) but the particular tracker product was a loss maker for them. We were not talking about everything Octopus do just the tracker product.

What a wonderful thing to do, to bring an innovative product to the market to make a loss and keep it loss making for soo long.

You have no evidence that the tracker product ever made a loss, apart from Octopus's PR team claiming that it did.

You have no idea what price they paid in the contract that purchased the energy that they supplied to you.

I wondered when you would turn up. 

At the time of that release from Octopus I did infact believe them. The previous years we had received such cheap electricity it was too good to be true. That was enough "proof" for me and I didn't see a reason for Octopus lying about it.

It was clear from wholesale pricing through that time we were on the very cheap tracker versions they were indeed running this at a loss and that's when there were less than 2000 on this at the very start and the pioneers. Early tracker v1 and v2 were run at a loss, that was clear for all to see. 

I would expect, with so much venom towards Octopus from some members here they could prove the above wrong and the Octopus release factually incorrect. If they can't, or can't be bothered to scroll through the historic data then they are just venting their hate of Octopus and nothing more,

Spoonie_Turtle

People can choose whether to believe what Octopus said about it being a loss maker, or choose not to.

What they can't do is categorically state that Octopus made a profit from it - unless they have the accounts to prove it (and a way to authenticate them).

BarelySentientAI

MP1995 said:

BarelySentientAI said:

MP1995 said:

stripling said:

What? Prove what?
I've been on Tracker for years, since the very 1st version - it went sky high multiple times.
Hedge fund? 🤦🏻‍♀️ Go read.... 
Platform company? 🤦🏻‍♀️ Check their annual reports and how much Kraken earns them around the planet. 
It's my job to keep an eye on these things but seriously, it's not rocket science. 
That's your lot - I think you are suffering a serious dose of fan boy-itis. The only cure is pain. 🫢😂

As a company yes they are recently (last few years bouyant) but the particular tracker product was a loss maker for them. We were not talking about everything Octopus do just the tracker product.

What a wonderful thing to do, to bring an innovative product to the market to make a loss and keep it loss making for soo long.

You have no evidence that the tracker product ever made a loss, apart from Octopus's PR team claiming that it did.

You have no idea what price they paid in the contract that purchased the energy that they supplied to you.

I wondered when you would turn up. 

Behave.

You make an assertion, you back it up.  Or explain why you have direct experience.  Otherwise it's nothing more than a guess.  You guess that because the wholesale price you were looking at was higher than the retail price to you, it was at a loss.  That's a misunderstanding of the market.  Nobody outside the Octopus trading team actually knows what price they paid, so any backward looking we do would be a guess.

I have no idea whether it did, didn't, still does, or no longer does make a loss.  Might have, might not have.  If I had to guess, I'd say that it probably sometimes made a loss and sometimes didn't, I don't have any way to estimate what the overall balance was, and now it's changed to always make a profit.  That would also only be a guess though.

Griffindog

They would have made a loss in 2022 (?) when prices went up to 50p+ and we were capped at 40p. I believe they also lost out when they applied the EPG to tracker rates even though it was lower than the tracker cap as they didn’t get the government funding for tracker customers IIRC.

BarelySentientAI

Griffindog said:

They would have made a loss in 2022 (?) when prices went up to 50p+ and we were capped at 40p. I believe they also lost out when they applied the EPG to tracker rates even though it was lower than the tracker cap as they didn’t get the government funding for tracker customers IIRC.

They lost out, certainly, but they only made a loss if they paid more than what they sold it for.  Given we have no idea what they paid, on what market, under what contract terms etc...  anything we think (unless someone wants to claim to have Octopus' internal contract documents) is a guess.

TheElectricCow

My memory of the time is a little hazy, but I seem to recall something from Octopus suggesting that part of the "loss making" aspect was in relation to the Market Stabilisation Charge for all the new customers they were acquiring who were switching to Tracker, which would have been practically the cheapest tariff going at the time.

I can't speak to the accuracy of any such claims, but to a layperson like myself with only a minor interest in the energy industry I could believe that to have been a broadly correct statement at the time. It certainly would make more sense to me that instead of the tariff itself being loss making when working as designed, other costs relating to the tariff could mean Tracker wasn't generating a profit on all the customers who were switching to it

Qyburn

To what extent is Octopus able to split their power purchases between hedged advance commitment, daily spot rate, and half hourly?  Obviously if they pay the same price then they make less margin selling to a Tracker customer at say 17.68p, compared to selling the same thing at 22.9p.

On a related point do people think Octopus makes a profit when paying 15p per kWh for export?

BarelySentientAI

Qyburn said:

To what extent is Octopus able to split their power purchases between hedged advance commitment, daily spot rate, and half hourly?  Obviously if they pay the same price then they make less margin selling to a Tracker customer at say 17.68p, compared to selling the same thing at 22.9p.

On a related point do people think Octopus makes a profit when paying 15p per kWh for export?

Depends on how good their prediction of demand is.  The more accurate the prediction then the more things can be played in the market, but at the risk of being exposed to system sell/buy prices (which aren't the HH rate, but a similar concept).

Plus there are then the accountancy tricks of applying some purchase contracts against Tracker customers, others against SVR customers etc...  which mean nothing in reality but can fudge the book outcome if you want.

stripling

If you think that market speculation and gas prices have an impact, wait until you look at what people can do with constraints and grid balancing. 

I don't think, I know. I have been interviewing industry insiders and experts - it's my job. The speculation has got out of hand in ways that never occurred previously, driven by new players (not energy companies). 

De-linking electricity prices from gas is pretty much what most pro-decarbonisation experts argue for including Greg Jackson. 

Yeah, constraints and grid balancing - might have to catch up with you on that further down the line if possible - I'm all ears. 😁

stripling

@MP1995
I would expect, with so much venom towards Octopus from some members here they could prove the above wrong and the Octopus release factually incorrect. If they can't, or can't be bothered to scroll through the historic data then they are just venting their hate of Octopus and nothing more. 

What a truly bizarre take... Venom? Hate? For Octopus? Yikes!  🤦🏻‍♀️😂

I missed that. 😁

I'll repeat what I said earlier: selling energy in multiple countries is only a part of Octopus's business. They are an IT platform company funded with big money from hedge funds. Their big (if not huge) money comes from the Kraken platform. I have listened to Greg himself talk about this. That's what underpins Octopus - that and an absolutely top notch marketing model. 

Many companies, including Octopus, will invest in new products and offer them at cost or even below to grab market share. As soon as they have grabbed what they want the price goes up. Nothing too unusual in the business world but the business world has shifted a lot in shape and form since the financial crash and is operating through very different, far more opaque models to previously. Saying this is stating facts not "venom".  

I compare energy prices in multiple countries - as I said, this stuff is part of my job right now. Britain pays through the nose compared to many other countries in Europe (including British Octopus customers in comparison to say, Spanish Octopus customers). This occurs for a variety of reasons and is NOT a complaint - it is just a statement of fact.  I'm in the UK right now, I pay. End of story.  

I look forward to further decarbonisation and the de-linking of electricity prices from gas. 

BTW. do not demand data of Tracker prices or anything else if you aren't providing it yourself.