Firstly, thank you for rising to the challenges we have all faced recently and for doing so with a willingness to adapt and a positive attitude - from planning and logistics to the fast deployment of homeworking capability. If you had asked me at the beginning of March I would have said it would be impossible to get virtually the whole of business working from home in the time period we did.
I’m aware that many of you have been forced to be creative in finding a space within your home for work to take place. Thank you for embracing our new way of operating and for continuing to be performance-minded.
During these unprecedented times, some of you will be asked to undertake activities to support the business that don’t normally form part of your day-to-day working life. Thank you in advance for embracing this with the same spirit.
Organisations across the UK have been forced to either change the way they operate or temporarily close their doors. Many of these organisations are our customers. Accepting this situation will undoubtedly cause them anguish, and we must try our best to support them.
A communication will be sent to our SME customers within the next week advising them of how we intend to help them, specifically relating to their March and April bills. This is particularly aimed at customers that don’t have a smart meter or AMR. We are working on the finer details of this now and will share it with you in due course. We will shortly implement a bespoke strategy for our Major Business customers.
We are of course not going be immune to the impact on our business, no matter how well we deal with the situation. There are two main areas of concern for us:
- Firstly, when we sign a contract with a customer we generally hedge the energy on that day at a the market price. With the “lockdown” having significant impacts across the whole UK economy - and many businesses completely closed down, that energy is now not being consumed by our customers. This surplus energy has to be sold by TGP back into the market. Unfortunately market prices are extremely low, therefore generating immediate loss positions
- Secondly, bad debt will be a major issue over the coming months as unfortunately many of our customers, large and small, will not survive during this period. We have always been prudent on taking credit risk and we insure part of our portfolio, however we again expect to see losses in this area.
It is very difficult to accurately quantify the impacts, but certainly our profitability will be significantly reduced in 2020. However we must remember that UK Marketing is a strong business that has delivered excellent results over the last 10+ years and we are positioned well to deal with this crisis.
Here I ask for your help to keep your productivity and effectiveness levels to a maximum as this will help greatly during the coming months!
In terms of the successful running of our own organisation, one of my priorities is to keep you informed on a regular basis. For the time being you’ll receive up to two newsletters per week. The information in the newsletters will vary from business-critical updates to helpful advice on important matters such as looking after your mental health. I encourage you all to read it and recommend the content is discussed in your regular team meetings. Together, we can achieve great things - even during the most testing of times. Understanding what’s happening across the business will help us to realise this.
We will also be running more frequent SMT breakfast clubs. They will now be virtual sessions that are run in Teams. You have all received an email about this and can also sign up via Workplace.
As we continue to follow Government advice regarding staying at home, I sincerely hope you and your household are too. Safety is one of our core values and your health is our number one priority.
Yours,
Dave Cranfield
