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Highlights:
- Origin Energy has made an additional investment of AU$163 million in Octopus Energy Group to maintain a 20% stake in the firm.
- Octopus has now become UK’s fifth largest energy retailer.
- With the recent capital raise round, the value of Octopus Energy has reached £3.5 billion.
Energy business operator, Origin Energy Limited (ASX:ORG) on Tuesday shared that it has made an additional investment in Octopus Energy Group Limited in order to maintain a 20% equity interest in the company. Origin has pumped in AU$163 million (£94 million) in Octopus.
Octopus Energy is a UK-based technology and renewable energy company.
On the back of this update, the share price of Origin jumped 0.53% on the ASX to AU$5.69 per share at 10:12 AM AEST. The benchmark index, ASX 200 Utilities (INDEXASX:XUJ) was however down by 0.11% to 7,806.40 at 10:35 AM AEST.
Recent investment in Octopus follows the investment by major international investors like Tokyo Gas, Generation Investment Management (GIM), and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which invested £175 million in total in the funding round.
With this capital raise round, the value of Octopus has increased fourfold since May 2020 to more than £3.5 billion.
Image source: © Route66 | Megapixl.com
Origin last invested AU$70 million in Octopus in September 2021 and since then, Octopus has made considerable progress across its technology, renewable energy and retail energy business.
Over the year, Octopus has become the fifth largest energy retailer across the UK. The company’s customer base has reached 3.1 million with 5.5 million customer accounts
In just two years, the company has migrated around 8.7 million customer accounts for the UK E.ON Energy, uplifting the customer’s experience and delivering cash savings.
Management commentary
Commenting on the latest development, Origin CEO Frank Calabria said,
Image Source: © 2022 Kalkine Media ®
Data Source- Company announcement dated 26 July 2022
Another important update by Origin
Through today’s release, Origin also informed that the migration of its gas and electricity customers to Kraken is on track and is expected to be completed by the end of the calendar year 2022.
Origin said that over half of the customer’s accounts are on Kraken as of today and with the scaling up of migration to Kraken, the customer happiness rate has gone high, and the company is now aiming to achieve the targeted cost benefits.
Kraken is the proprietary technology of Octopus Energy, designed to improve customer services of suppliers and efficiency.
