Eon claims ‘turnaround’ for retail business

Eon has achieved a “turnaround” for its retail business in the UK, which contributed £100 million of earnings to its customer solutions segment in 2020, the company has announced in its financial results for the year.

This compares to a £200 million loss in 2019 following the acquisition of Innogy and its subsidiary Npower as part of a major asset swap with RWE.

Eon said it has successfully migrated around 90 per cent of the customers of Npower to its new Eon Next platform “in just a single year despite the lockdown.” It said 70 per cent of residential Npower customers had been migrated by December.

The Eon Next platform is powered by Octopus Energy’s Kraken software to which Eon secured the rights in March 2020. The company said it intends to transfer all of its retail customers across by the end of 2022.

Despite the increased profits from retail, adjusted earnings before interest and tax, depreciation and amortisation across the whole of its customer solutions segment in the UK fell from €32 million to €1 million. Earnings before interest and tax declined from a loss of €106 million to a loss of €129 million.

Customer numbers also dropped from 10.9 million to 10.3 million.