SSE's profits up but customer numbers fall

The company says it will close the Ferrybridge C coal-fired power station

Energy company SSE has reported a 40% rise in profits from its retail arm, despite losing more than 500,000 customers over a year.

It announced that its retail arm saw a rise in operating profit to £456.8m in the 12 months to the end of March.

This included a 50% rise in profits from retail energy supply. It made an average profit of £69 from each dual fuel customer, it said.

This, it said, returned profit to a similar level seen in 2012-13.

However, its profit margin in energy supply was 4.6% in 2014-15, compared with 2.9% in 2013-14 and 4.2% in 2012-13. The energy supply profit margin had averaged 3.9% over both the past five and three years, it said.

Ferrybridge closure

Gas and electricity prices have been frozen for SSE customers until 2016 and the company said it had cut prices twice in recent times.

"SSE would like to extend its price freeze again, or even cut prices if further costs can be taken out of energy supply, and will work with the new UK government or indeed any stakeholder to find such solutions," it said.

It has seen customer numbers fall despite the price freeze, blaming "increasingly challenging and highly competitive market conditions" for the decline to 8.5 million accounts.

Some of this extra competition has come from smaller providers taking on the big six companies in the UK.

Across the whole business, SEE reported an adjusted pre-tax profit for the 12 months to the end of March of £1.56bn, compared with £1.55bn the year before.

It also said it would shut the Ferrybridge power station on the West and North Yorkshire border by March 2016.

The company said the plant's 172 employees would be redeployed "where possible".