Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 31ST JANUARY - 6TH FEBRUARY 2020 | 11 Interview I t was just three years aer launching into the turbu- lent world of the UK energy retail market that Octopus Energy scooped both the Disruptor and the Utility of the Year prizes at the Utility Week Awards. The wins per- haps signal a sign of the times; the challenger brand has well and truly come of age. It's a point we raised with its chief executive Greg Jackson, who took time out from his hands-on role to talk to Utility Week about the direction of travel. "This is an amazing market, it's going through rapid change, it's becoming consumer focused, the technol- ogy is going to revolutionise it and we are going to cease being a driver of climate change and we're going to start to fix it. If you're a venture investor, where else would you want to be?" Greg Jackson is clearly a man passionate about the opportunities energy retail can bring for consumers and businesses. The Octopus Energy boss speaks about his field with unbridled enthusiasm when we meet at the company's vibrant Soho offices. Octopus Energy, funded by Octopus Group, is one of the UK's most recognisable challenger brands and currently serves 1.4 million customers. A green energy provider, Octopus prides itself on innovative products such as its Agile tariff, a time-of-use tariff which in 2018 saw rates go negative for short peri- ods, meaning customers could actually be paid to use energy – a first in the UK. The company has loy ambitions and Jackson has previously said that by the end of the decade it aims to have 100 million customers on its platform globally. The office is filled with the noise of creative productiv- ity and has the informal air of a start-up firm. A conspicu- ous sign of constant growth is the gigantic switch wedged into a corner, ready to be wheeled out at launch events – most recently that of council-backed London Power. Jackson likens his team of bright young professionals, who he refers to as his "secret weapon", with NASA Mis- sion Control. While he might not quite share the austere air of fighter pilot turned flight director Gene Kranz, who took the helm during the Apollo 11 mission, he certainly takes lessons from the first manned lunar landing. "People forget that the average age of an engineer in the Mission Control room for Apollo 11 when it landed on the moon was 28. Actually, because a lot of them had been on since the beginning of the programme, they were 22 when they began. "The people who are building this business, most of our team are graduates, and then among our specialist function we have got a tremendous number of people with PhDs and degrees from the best universities around the world. "This is a change in energy retail, it's a talent and technology business now and that goes from the people looking aer the customers through to the people build- ing the machine-learning models that replace entire departments with automation." He adds that the youthful representatives of his com- pany at the Utility Week Awards prompted a caustic com- ment from one onlooker of "where are the grown-ups?". A move for the big six? The market Octopus operates in is volatile and con- stantly evolving. With fellow challenger supplier Ovo Energy having completed a £500 million deal to take on SSE's retail arm, the "big six" is a name that no longer applies in the traditional sense. Furthermore, Eon is cur- rently going through the process of absorbing Npower. There is a lot of movement among the large players. Could Octopus be the next challenger looking to acquire a former big six retail arm? Jackson responds by saying the company is "abso- lutely focused" on being a disruptor. He adds: "If we made an acquisition like that [SSE], chances are we would cease to be a disruptor. We would cease to be a consumer champion and we can't afford to do that." But if it isn't in the market for one of the big players, that doesn't mean it's not on the lookout for a bargain. Octopus has made no less than six acquisitions in the past two years. And speaking to Utility Week aer this inter- view, and aer the company announced the purchase of the 70,000 domestic customers of French firm Engie, Jackson said there was "no end in sight" for acquisitions. Other notable acquisitions include 300,000 customers from Co-op Energy, while the company recently began supplying customers via the council-backed London Power. In addition, Octopus also supplies customers via M&S Energy and Affect Energy.

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