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The founder of Octopus Energy says he hopes to list the company’s £6.4bn Kraken Technologies unit in the UK but calls for London Stock exchanges are taking additional steps to make the market more attractive to newly listed companies.
Octopus Energy Group will spin off its software unit in the coming months and has agreed to sell a minority stake in Kraken, valuing the unit at $8.65bn (£6.4bn).
CEO Greg Jackson told press association A stock market listing is one of the options being considered in the next two to three years following the demerger.
He said he would “love” to choose London, but at the moment it was a “flip of a coin” between the UK and New York.
He told PA: “As a founder, a shareholder and a Brit, I want it to be in London.
“But I need to see more noise london stock exchange (LON) – They need to bring in more capital. “
He said the London Stock Exchange needed to “beat the drum for London” and he believed government More needs to be done to encourage UK pension funds to invest in UK companies.
“We need to see continued efforts to improve London for companies and investors,” he said.
Octopus, Britain’s largest gas and electricity supplier, is selling about $1bn (£740m) of a stake in Kraken to a consortium of investors including global investment firm D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity International and a unit of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Annual results published on Tuesday revealed a huge annual loss for the company, which took a hit of more than £100m as warmer weather reduced energy demand.
The company, which has 7.6 million customers in the UK, made a pre-tax loss of £260.1 million in the year to April 30, compared with a profit of £77.6 million the previous year.
The company said warmer weather reduced underlying revenue by around £103m as the UK experienced its hottest spring since 1885, with gas use falling 11% in March and 25% in April.
The group also said earnings were hit by a one-off final payment to the government after a bailout took over collapsed suppliers. light bulb In 2021, Octopus secured state support to bail out the provider and received payments from an industry-wide scheme that had previously allowed energy suppliers to recover costs accumulated during the crisis.
Excluding these one-off charges, profit was £90m, down 69% as it increased spending on staff, expansion and marketing.
Its UK home energy division achieved record underlying revenue of £347m and added 800,000 energy customers through conversions, taking its total to 7.6 million at the end of April, while overseas customers almost doubled to 2.4 million.
Earlier this year, Octopus overtook British Gas to become the UK’s largest energy supplier, with a market share of 24%.
Figures showed the group’s revenue rose 10% to £13.7bn.
The group said it spent 57 million pounds to reduce standard energy tariffs for UK customers, adding that its balance sheet was “strong” with net assets of 1.5 billion pounds.
But Octopus confirmed earlier this year that it was one of three retail energy companies that had yet to meet one of regulator Ofgem’s two financial resilience targets.
The company said it would continue to “work constructively” with Ofgem on a plan to meet capital adequacy rules, although it added that the requirements “set a level that has no precedent in any other deregulated market in which we operate”.
It added: “The group is financially resilient, with the UK retail business exceeding the regulator’s minimum capital requirements and meeting the agreed pathway to achieve targets.”
The group said the Kraken investment plan and a further $320m (£237m) cash injection would almost double its current net assets, improving its balance sheet.
Octopus announced plans in September to spin off Kraken, an artificial intelligence platform used by global energy retailers to connect more than 70 million home and business energy accounts.
The spin-off will help accelerate Kraken’s expansion. Kraken was originally built for use by Octopus, but has since acquired a host of other utility customers, including EDF, E.On Next, TalkTalk and National Grid US.