SSE cuts prices after customer numbers drop
SHARES in energy firm SSE went up by 1.61 per cent yesterday after the company confirmed that it would be dropping its prices by 4.1 per cent from 30 April onwards.
The group is the fifth of the big six power companies to drop gas prices since the beginning of the year, with only EDF yet to make a similar move.
SSE made the move as it released results for the third quarter of the 2014 financial year. The number of SSE electricity and gas customer accounts in Great Britain and Ireland fell from 9.1m on 31 March 2014 to 8.7m at 31 December. The firm blamed mild weather in the third quarter for the fact that average electricity consumption by SSE’s household customers in the UK fell by 5.6 per cent during the nine months to 31 December. Gas consumption fell by an estimated 15.8 per cent in the same period.
Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of SSE, said: “The challenging business environment we identified at the start of this financial year is likely to continue into the new financial year and we believe that addressing the resulting issues directly is the right thing to do for customers and the best way of safeguarding the interests of investors.”