Where did Energy Holding go?

“You will hear about us again soon.” This was one of the few sentences uttered by Roy Maybud, Energy Holding general manager at the end of June during a short telephone interview with BUSINESS Magazin. Maybud was the deputy general manager of the energy supplier for a few years and took the top position in November 2008, after the former founder and manager Enrique Ferrer stepped down.

Energy Holding stopped talking to the press officially about two years ago; its officials put the silence down to the aggressive media articles about the “smart guys” and their contracts to preferentially sell cheap power. Sporadic information released by the company more than two years ago was about CSR or investment projects such as the electrical power plant in Gorj. They said very little about the electricity sale business.

However, Energy Holding’s business has had its ups and downs over the last few years: the company was sold, then greatly developed its Balkan division, lost major local contracts, restructured, changed its management, lost or dropped the entire market share accumulated in the last five years and has recently started a new advertising campaign. A discreet campaign, carried out on the web, but focusing on services, emphasising the idea that all suppliers on the market sell power, but Energy Holding sells an integrated energy service.

Roy Maybud took over from Enrique Ferrer a company whose strength on the market has been dwindling in the past year after the loss of the most important contracts, which had boosted its business in previous years – such as those with Petrom, Oltchim and Alro; this caused a significant decline of the market share, from the 19% peak in 2007 to 6% in 2008 and to less than 1% in January 2009. The slump to less than 1% at the beginning of this year is due, according to the company officials, to the loss of these major contracts, which happened gradually from the end of 2007 till mid 2008. Roy Maybud says the loss of clients was the reason for decline, while the other reason undoubtedly has to do with the overall economic situation.

Although very reserved in his statements, Roy Maybud believes this is not the right time to be making forecasts both as far as the company and the overall economic trend are concerned. However, less than one year after taking the reins of Energy Holding, Maybud is relatively optimistic: “We did lose some important clients, but we are focusing on smaller clients and I believe we can go on just fine. We cannot say we are not affected by the crisis.

We operate on the industrial market and the industry decline of 20-30% or even more has a directly proportional effect on the company’s business.”
The decline of Energy Holding’s business started in 2008: from 344 million euros in 2007, the company was down to 226 million euros in turnover last year, according to Trade Registry data. The level of Energy Holding’s turnover last year, as well as this year could also be influenced by the emergence of a new supplier company, EHOL Distribution (in mid 2008). EHOL is the nickname Energy Holding used in the past years in order to participate in tenders or for acquisitions from the energy exchange.

Market sources say Energy Holding broke up into two companies in 2008: Energy Holding and Energy Holding Distribution or EHOL Distribution, with the latter taking over most of the supply contracts or the former, as well as part of the power bought for the long term by Energy Holding from Hidroelectrica.
Market sources say EHOL was spun off from its parent company in order to be sold and avoid Competition Council scrutiny. It was sold to Alpiq (created by two Swiss companies, which are very active on the energy market, Atel Holding Ltd. and Energie Ouest Suisse SA) this July.