Andy_W
Well-known member
Yeah, you know full well that they're stuffing profit into those other "costs" though, the actual "profit" or earnings line isn't the real earnings, everything gets funnelled out the back door in other areas, every company does it as they actually want their profit to be low as they don't want to pay tax on it. Also the profit on accounts submission day is very different compared to typical month to month running etc, and they know when accounts are due and do all they can to not show profit, well at least the smaller companies and the start-ups etc, which aren't listed with public shareholders etc.Here is an old breakdown , not to the same level of detail but shows it's not always been hundreds of profit leading into this
View attachment 72502
You also have to remember this is price CAP too, many went anywhere near the price cap, so that wasn't pure profit per customer, that had to subsidise the new customer deals too
At least on the above chart wholesale costs would have been fairly steady, but wholesale costs have rocketed down each quarter and more so in futures prices etc, and the prices coming down have nowhere near kept up.
Even when the companies go "broke", they know they're going "broke" long in advance, probably at least a year, so they use that time to shift all the cash and anything incoming out the back door and into the next "new company", and they leave nothing left to pay their suppliers/ contractors etc, other than those they need for the new business, or miraculously those companies end up with all their invoices paid before bankruptcy is declared. See things like this in the utilities sector on the actual installation and maintenance side, but it happens in any business which largely relies on invoices out on 30 day terms and invoices in on 30 day terms etc.
In 2021 I was paying 13p electric and 2.3p gas with EDF and that was fixed for a year, they won't have been losing out on that and wholesale prices now are even cheaper than then.