"I view my success as an entrepreneur not by how successful or rich I become but by how many other people achieve financial freedom through Telecom plus. I believe Telecom plus has the potential to make more genuine Distributor millionaires than any other referral marketing company in the UK - bar none" Charles Wigoder.

The above extract is from a three page feature in Making Money magazine (March 2009) - a UK publication dedicated to franchise, network marketing and business opportunities. Titled - 'An Income You Can Bank On', this excellent article replaces an earlier Utility Warehouse feature article of the same name that was first published in this magazine in 2003. With up-to-date references to the Company's promotion to the FTSE-250, recent magazine accolades and record growth, this article is an ideal read for any potential Utility Warehouse distributor. To receive a full copy of this article, please contact us.

Labels: company-information

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 3/19/2009 01:16:00 PM

Telecom plus PLC, the UK's leading low-cost multi-utility supplier (gas, electricity, telephony, internet), announces preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2007.

Financial and business highlights:

- Turnover up 29% to £176m (2006: £136m)
- Profit before tax of £11.6m (2006: loss £1.6m)
- Net cash balance increased by £19.9m to £25.8m (2006: £5.9m)
- Final dividend of 6.0p (2006: 1.0p)
- Number of services provided increased 9% during the year to 542,039 (2006: 495,679)
- Number of independent distributors up 4% to 16,600
- Significant growth in Business Club customers to 6,388 (2006: 2,200)

Peter Nutting, Chairman, said:

'We are still the UK's only fully integrated provider of a wide range of attractively priced utility services, with a distribution channel of proven ability in cost effectively gathering high quality new customers each month,
which gives us a considerable competitive advantage in the domestic market. We also now have good earnings visibility following the elimination of our previous exposure to price fluctuations in the wholesale energy markets.

'We therefore remain confident that the current year will see further progress in the development of our business, and in the continuing delivery of satisfactory results.'

Chairmans Statement

I am delighted to report a year of record turnover and profits for the Company.

We achieved pre-tax profits of £11.6m (2006: £1.6m loss) on turnover which increased by 29% to £176m (2006: £136m). This substantial increase in turnover was driven by the favourable combination of higher energy prices together with an increase in the number of services provided to our customers.

Our cash balances increased by almost £20m during the year to just under £26m, a level which is substantially greater than we need to meet our forecast working capital requirements. Shareholders may recall that we raised approximately £10m through a share placing in May 2005, when we needed a stronger balance sheet to support our wholesale energy commitments during a period of rising prices and greater volatility in the wholesale markets. As a result of the transaction we announced in February 2006, these requirements are now substantially the responsibility of npower. We are therefore seeking authority at the forthcoming AGM to reduce our share premium account, in order to increase our distributable reserves and enable us to repurchase our shares in the market. The directors intend to consider making such purchases if, in the light of market conditions prevailing at that time, the directors believe that such purchases would increase earnings per share and would be for the benefit of the shareholders generally.

We have made good progress in developing our distribution channel, with a net increase of around 600 new independent distributors over the year, taking the total to around 16,600. We anticipate a further steady increase during the current year as we continue to invest significant resources in supporting our channel. An important development during the year was the launch of a new recruitment DVD ' What's it all about?' We also improved and simplified the bonus structure for new distributors in the Autumn, and this has clearly been a factor (together with the new DVD) behind the increased recruitment activity we have seen over the last 6 months.

Customer numbers overall remained broadly stable over the year; however this headline figure masks several important trends. Firstly, although the number of residential customers fell slightly to 208,444, the quality of the customer base has continued to improve, with the average number of services taken by each member increasing to 2.95 (2006: 2.76). Secondly, our Business Club (which we launched about 18 months ago) has seen significant growth over the year, with customer numbers increasing to 6,388 (2006: 2,200). It is particularly encouraging that members of our Business Club not only take multiple services, but also have higher average revenues and lower churn than domestic customers. Thirdly, the proportion of our residential customers who are now members of our Discount Club (and are thus eligible to take advantage of our new 'Free UK Calls' (multi-service discount) has increased to 72% (2006: 66%).

The lack of growth in residential customer numbers during the year was partly due to our decision to wait until the latest technology for supporting high speed low cost broadband ('LLU') had been installed in sufficient BT local exchanges, and the inevitable teething problems associated with the introduction of any new technology had been resolved. We feel this decision has been vindicated by the highly publicised problems experienced by those companies who launched their services earlier in the year. Our new BroadCall service (which combines Line rental, Calls and High Speed Broadband in a single package) was launched last Autumn and we expect this to account for an increasing proportion of our turnover in coming years.

Our infrastructure and systems were originally developed to enable us to manage a significantly larger number of customers than currently use our services, which means we have the potential to benefit from considerable economies of scale by growing our customer numbers. This is one of our key priorities for the coming year.

Recent published surveys show we are generally held in high esteem by our customers. We therefore intend to capitalise on this goodwill by encouraging them to recommend us, through launching a 'friend get friend' programme later this year. However before we can do so effectively we need to establish an inbound tele-sales fulfilment team, so that potential new customers can sign up for our services with the minimum of effort or inconvenience.

We are also establishing a specialist Home Movers team to help us retain a higher proportion of those potential new customers who have moved into a property where we were supplying the previous occupant.

I would like to thank our staff and distributors for the loyalty they have shown and the considerable contribution they have made to the continued success of the business.

Dividend

We are proposing a final dividend of 6p for the year (2006: 1p) making a total for the year of 8p (2006:1p), which will be paid on 10 August 2007 to shareholders on the register at the close of business on 13 July 2007 and is subject to approval by shareholders at the Company's Annual General Meeting which is being held on 11 July 2007. We intend to maintain a progressive dividend policy in future.

Segmental reporting

There are two fundamentally different business activities carried out by the Company. The first is the acquisition of new customers through our distribution channel. The second is the administration, management and billing of all the services we supply to our customer base. Historically we have referred to these (perhaps somewhat confusingly) as our Distribution business and our Virtual Network business respectively. In future, these will be referred to as our Customer Acquisition business and our Customer Management business.

Last year, for the first time, we further subdivided our Customer Management business between the supply of energy and telephony services, primarily in recognition of the substantially different risk profiles associated with these activities. In telephony, margins have always been highly predictable because of the close association between the retail prices we charge and the wholesale costs we incur, whereas in energy the margins are extremely volatile because there is no relationship in the short term between prices in the wholesale and retail markets. Following the transaction with npower which completed in March 2006, this difference no longer exists.

The highly integrated nature of our business, where we have a single billing and customer service platform supporting all the services we provide, means it is impossible to provide a meaningful result for each service as any allocation of overhead between our energy and telephony supplies is wholly arbitrary. We have therefore decided to present the figures for our Customer Management business in future as a single segment, in line with the way in which the business is actually managed internally. A breakdown of our turnover, split between the different services we supply, is included in the Financial Review section of these accounts.

Board of Directors

During the year under review we said goodbye to John Levin and Stephen Davis. Richard Hateley was appointed Finance Director in addition to his responsibilities as Company Secretary, and I am delighted to welcome Melvin Lawson and Michael Pavia who have joined the Board as non executive directors. They both bring very considerable commercial experience to our deliberations and I am pleased Michael Pavia agreed to take over from me the chairmanship of the Audit Committee.

Outlook

The current forward price curves for gas and electricity indicate that it is unlikely there will be any further material reductions in retail energy prices this Autumn, although our recently announced price reductions (in common with all the other major energy suppliers) will have a small adverse impact on our turnover for the coming year. Our gross energy margin (in percentage terms) is expected to remain broadly unchanged, and we look forward to continuing to earn a satisfactory contribution from supplying energy in future.

We are still the UK's only fully integrated provider of a wide range of attractively priced utility services, with a distribution channel of proven ability in cost effectively gathering high quality new customers each month,
which gives us a considerable competitive advantage in the domestic market. We also now have good earnings visibility following the elimination of our previous exposure to price fluctuations in the wholesale energy markets.

We therefore remain confident that the current year will see further progress in the development of our business, and in the continuing delivery of satisfactory results.

Peter Nutting

Chairman

5 June 2007


Further from the Business Review...

Our Distributors

Our distributors remain one of our key strengths. In contrast to other utility suppliers, the alignment of financial interests provided by our revenue sharing model ensures that our distributors focus their activities on finding credit-worthy and high spending customers who will reap the maximum savings from using our services, and will thus be least likely to churn. By doing so, they maximise their own long-term returns.

During the Autumn, we simplified the payment structure covering the bonuses available to new distributors, giving them the opportunity to earn a bonus of £200 (equal to their original joining fee) by gathering a minimum of 12 new customers within their first 90 days.

Our Car Plan, which provides eligible distributors with a subsidised fully-branded Mini remains extremely popular, and we have now supplied almost 70 cars. Owners find these helpful in raising their local profile, resulting in enquiries from both potential new customers and distributors, and we are currently considering how we can extend this programme to bring it within reach of a substantially larger number of distributors.

Distributors have seen a considerable increase in their average earnings from each customer during the last 2 years as a result of the growth in the number of services taken combined with sharply higher energy prices. Whilst there remains scope for some further modest rises as the average number of services taken continues to increase, distributors will now need to achieve consistent growth in their personal and Group customer numbers in order to obtain a meaningful increase in their current earnings as a distributor. Our unique market position continues to make this predominantly part-time career extremely attractive to potential new recruits.

Our national training programme has been further enhanced during the year, with the introduction of a full-day training course for new distributors, which replaced the previous two half-day sessions. We also have training modules to support our Business Club (including the supply of Commercial Energy and the increasing popularity of BlackBerrys), and a Personal Development Programme to provide our next generation of leaders with the additional skills they will
need.

Read full preliminary results

Also see...

Report & Accounts - Year ended 31st March 2007

Labels: company-information, corporate-news, director-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 6/09/2007 02:24:00 AM

College of Excellence - The road to success starts with a single step!

Overview of The Utility Warehouse College of Excellence training
(Extracts from Utility Warehouse distributor business manual)

It’s a fact that the more success you achieve in the early days of your Utility Warehouse business, the greater the momentum you build for your future. Therefore it is important that you get your business up and running immediately. To help you do that The Company recommend that you should make it a priority to attend The Utility Warehouse Distributor's College of Excellence. This will show you how you can take immediate action in the growth and profitability of your Utility Warehouse business. Statistics show that Executives who attend the College of Excellence are up to three TIMES MORE SUCCESSFUL than those who don’t!

The training provided at the College of Excellence has been put together by some of the most successful Executives specifically to benefit new Executives, and is based upon successful, proven methods that WORK! This means that you do not need to make the same mistakes that some of The Company's original Executives made when they started their Utility Warehouse business, and you can simply learn and earn from methods that have proven to be successful already and duplicate that success, so that you can build your business and income as quickly as you wish.

There are over 20 official Utility Warehouse College of Excellence training venues around the country, which means that our training venues are typically within an hour’s travelling distance of most people. So please make the effort to attend as soon as possible.

College of Excellence – Part 1 Training

The focus of College of Excellence Part 1 training is how to gather your first 12 customers from your warm market, in a simple and non-confrontational way.

In addition, the following is covered:

- How to present the entire range of Utility Warehouse Discount Club products and services using the KISS approach (Keep It Short & Simple!) on a try it (not buy it) basis.
- How to overcome ALL of the objections, and questions, that could be thrown at you by potential customers.
- How to ensure that every new customer can open the door to several more by getting referrals.
- How to turn negatives into positives and how to overcome fear.
- How to get your customers to take a range of Utility Warehouse Discount Club services instead of just one – ensuring more income for you!
- How to recruit your customers as Distributors and how to start building a team.

College of Excellence – Part 2 Training

The focus of College of Excellence Part 2 training is to show you how to sponsor your first three Utility Warehouse Executives and reach the position of Senior Executive in time to maximise the early bonuses. Our experienced, friendly trainers will use their expertise, knowledge and skills in recruitment and team-building to take you through the “prospecting pipeline” from when someone is simply a ‘suspect’ for the business, to when they become a prospect, to when they join.

The training will:

- Help you answer your questions, and overcome any objections and fears you may have.
- Help you understand how to present the Utility Warehouse business in the right way, asking the right questions, and focusing on the benefits, not the features!
- Help you confidently answer common questions like: “ Why should I pay £200?”, “Is this one of those pyramid selling schemes? And “How do I know it’ll work?”
- Help you to understand how your prospect thinks, and we’ll provide you with strategies to overcome the mind monsters that may hold you back from making a success of your Telecom plus business.

You’ll leave your College of Excellence training feeling confident enough to take on, and recruit, the world!

College of Excellence Development Programme for Senior Executives and above

This training programme is exclusively for Utility Warehouse distributors who have reached at least the Senior Executive level. The Company's most senior trainers will provide advice and mentoring on:

- Building your business to the next position, (specific to the individuals attending, based on their current genealogy.)
- Understanding how to use the genealogy effectively; and how to become a proactive Team Leader and sponsor.
- Planning for medium and long term growth by understanding how the ‘time and effort versus income’ curve works.

You’ll hear the secrets of the top Distributors - how they recruit; how they help their team to recruit customers and Distributors; and how they organise their time (despite often having hectic schedules)...and lots lots more!

College of Excellence for Business

The College of Excellence for Business deals very specifically with introducing utility services to business. This training session is open to all Executives who have attended the College of Excellence Part 1 training and it is essential for all Executives who wish to gather Business Club customers.

On registering for this Utility Warehouse training you will be sent a pack of materials which should be read prior to the training session. The training is based on the assumption that the following items have been read prior to attending: the Business Club Information Sheets, the Business Club Tariff Booklet,
the Business Club Application Form (Contract) and the Business Club Manual.

While some of the information in this literature may be expanded upon during the training, you will need to be familiar with the contents before arriving. For this reason, and so that you are registered on the system as having booked and attended the training (meaning your business customer applications will be accepted), please do not turn up for any training session if you have not booked a place.

There will be no training in these sessions for cold-calling or telecanvassing. This training is based on ‘relationship-marketing’ for Executives who have warm contacts and referrals (or the ability and desire to create them!) One of the reasons the College Of Excellence is so successful is that every training centre around the country offers exactly the same training, with the same content and the same key company and product information.

Are you serious?

Remember, 84% of people recently surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their lifestyle, job or income – we have the perfect solution for them, part or full time! Don’t you think that most of the people you know would like to earn more money this year than they did last year? Don’t you think that most of the people you come across would relish the chance to work from home, earn extra income, have extra holidays, pay for the kids to go to private school, retire early or gain a residual income to supplement the pension that might not be as generous as they had once thought?

You have a duty to share this information! You are doing people a favour by telling them about this business…they are not doing you a favour by listening! We’ll teach you that too!

We appreciate you may have some ideas yourself but results of the training have already proved that those who attend are significantly more successful than those who don’t! Some people train for years to allow themselves the privilege of a job that barely allows them to exist – we have a business that can offer the lifestyle most people can only dream of, so it is extremely important that you attend College of Excellence training (and re-attend if you wish).

The College of Excellence really is a must for anybody who is serious about building a profitable Utility Warehouse business. There are a lot of people earning substantial, life-changing incomes with the Utility Warehouse – there are many people having their mortgage paid each month without having to get out of bed – and there are numerous people who are earning that little bit extra which is the difference between living and existing.

College of Excellence testimonials

“I wish someone had made me attend the training before now. I didn’t realise how easy it could be to find customers – This is just what I needed!”

“What an incredible eye opener last Sunday’s training session was! The methods for recruiting customers were so incredibly simple – just a bit of practice needed.”

“I recently attended the excellent and most entertaining Part 1 College of Excellence training in London, and during one of the hilarious yet educational role-play exercises, we were taught how to respond to the objection that the potential customer doesn’t want to pay by direct debit. It was so simple. My only regret is that I didn’t attend the training earlier!”

“Just got back from Part 2 training – stopped at my friend’s shop on the way home and used the simple key question we’d been taught – it was really easy and I got a very positive response. My friend is coming to the next Career Opportunity Presentation! I am really happy – I feel the training has set me on the road to building a great business!”

“I’ve been in the business a couple of years – went to Part 2 training in Liverpool – just worked out why it’s been going slowly for us – we were doing it wrong!! Now we know how to build a business, I’ve already started prospecting people the right way, and had 2 Distributors join within a week of training! Excellent!”

“I recently joined as a Distributor and was urged by my upline to attend the College of Excellence training and I’m very glad I did. The two days were excellent and really helped me to get started. Part 1 showed how to get customers and Part 2 how to build a network of Distributors. It was obvious that the trainers knew what they were talking about and had bags of experience. What I especially liked were the mini role-plays where you had a chance to try things out for yourself.

I have spent my career designing and delivering management courses and was very impressed with the structure of the training and the professionalism with which it was presented. It was all of the highest quality. As a result of my experience, I am insisting that anyone joining my team must attend the College of Excellence, both parts, within three months. It’s crazy to waste such a superb resource."

Labels: company-information, press-articles, seminar-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 9/04/2006 10:56:00 AM

The Telecom plus management team includes experienced and professional executives who are leaders in the fields of telecommunications, finance, information technology, operations and customer service.

The Hon Charles Wigoder, Chief Executive

Charles Wigoder qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG in 1984 and was subsequently employed by Kleinwort Securities as an investment analyst in the media and communication sectors. Between 1985 and 1988, he was head of corporate finance and development at Carlton Communications plc and then Quadrant Group plc. In March 1988, he left Quadrant Group to set up The Peoples Phone Company plc, which was subsequently purchased by Vodafone for £77 million in December 1996. He joined the Company in February 1998.

Peter Nutting, Non-Executive Chairman

Peter Nutting has been Chairman of a number of public and private companies. He was a member of the Council of Lloyds between 1991 and 1998 and Deputy-Chairman of the Lloyds Regulatory Board from 1992 to 1994. He is currently Chairman of Hampden Agencies Ltd. He is a Director of Jove Investment Trust plc, Azuran plc, European Monthly Income Trust Ltd, ALM
Ltd and a number of other companies. He joined Telecom plus in April 1997.

Stephen Davis, Finance Director

Stephen is a Chartered Accountant. He joined BDO Stoy Hayward, the UK’s 6th largest accounting and business advisory practice, from university in 1983, and became a partner in 1991. Since 1995, he had been significantly involved in leading the firm, initially as head of a strategic business unit and from 2000, on the main Board, with direct responsibility for the London office. He joined Telecom plus in April 2005 and in addition to heading the finance
function Stephen is involved in many of the day-to-day operational areas of the business.

Clifford Wetherall, Group Director of IT and Billing

Clifford is an experienced IT professional with a PhD in software engineering. He was responsible for developing one of the UK’s leading database management systems, used by many of the country’s largest businesses and UK government departments. He joined the telecommunications industry in 1988 and from 1994 to 1997 was head of IT at Peoples Phone. He then worked for a mobile phone service provider in The Netherlands and a multibillion dollar telecommunications billing company in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Clifford joined Telecom plus in 1998 where he has developed IT systems for all aspects of the business including a sophisticated multi-service billing system that is the envy of the industry.

Wayne Coupland, Group Business Development Director

Wayne joined us from One2One where he held a senior management position and brings a wealth of experience to Telecom plus. Wayne is responsible for the introduction and project management of new services.

Malcolm Wolpert, Group Director Human Resources

Malcolm has 30 years experience in Customer Service, 20 of which were spent in the telecommunications industry. He joined Peoples Phone in 1990 as Customer Services Director with responsibility for over 200 customer service staff servicing over 400,000 customers.

Malcolm joined Telecom plus in 1998 as Customer Services Director and subsequently acquired many other roles including Director of Human Resources with additional responsibility for our business Customer Service Team supporting the Business Club and TML.

In March 2005 Malcolm was appointed Group Director of Human Resources concentrating fully on our Human Resources and Personnel functions.

Andy McWilliams, Executive Services Director

Andy joined Telecom plus at the beginning of 2005 from Ocado the successful internet
business where he was, as part of the original start-up team, responsible for launching their national home delivery team and customer contact centre. Prior to Ocado Andy had a number of senior roles managing large customer facing workforces.

At Telecom plus Andy is responsible for our 16,000 strong Distributor channel, the College of Excellence Training Programme and the head office team that supports our sales network.
Andy gained an MBA at Henley Management College in 2001.

Ravi Khanna, Customer Service Director

Ravi has spent his entire career working in customer relationship management. After an initial burst in IT recruitment account management, Ravi worked his way up the call centre food chain, and arrived at Telecom plus with extensive customer service management experience gained at Rover Cars, Britvic Soft Drinks and Valpak (Environmental Consultancy). Within a
few months of his joining the Company, the Utility Warehouse came top in a customer satisfaction survey of suppliers of line rental and calls. Under Ravi’s stewardship our customer service continues to set the benchmark for utilities providers across the country.

John Levin, Non-Executive Director

John Levin graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree in Business Information Systems. He is involved in the insurance industry in the United Kingdom and specialised in information technology solutions. In 1992 John joined IGI Insurance Company Limited and was the Managing Director from March 1995 to March 1997 and remains a director of all the IGI Group trading companies. He is a founder of Telecom plus and joined the board in April 1997.

Keith Stella, Non-Executive Director

Keith Stella is a Senior Partner in the Corporate Finance department with City solicitors, Berwin Leighton Paisner, and provides legal advice to a wide range of clients including a number of listed public companies. He joined Telecom plus in July 2000.

Dominic Wheatley, Non-Executive Director

After several years at an advertising agency, in 1984 Dominic Wheatley cofounded Domark Limited, a software entertainment developer and publisher for the home computer market, which was acquired by Eidos plc in 1995. He served as Chief Operating Officer of Eidos plc and Chief Executive of Eidos Inc in the USA until 1997. He is Chairman of Highway Capital plc and Kuju plc, Chief Executive of Bright Things plc and a Director of Statpro plc. He joined
Telecom plus in May 2000.

Richard Michell, Non-Executive Director

Richard Michell is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. From 1981 to 1988, he was Finance Manager and Company Secretary for Geosource UK Ltd, a subsidiary of Geosource Inc, a leading US oil exploration company. From 1988 to 1996, he was Treasurer of Sony Broadcast and Communication Ltd, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of Japan. He joined Telecom plus in April 1997 as Finance Director also covering the role of Executive Services Director. Richard retired in 2005 but retains his position as a member of the Board of Directors.

Labels: company-information

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 8/11/2006 04:09:00 PM

Telecom plus PLC was incorporated in 1996 and began operations in 1997, providing a unique range of low cost telephony services to householders and small to medium-sized businesses, a market that until then had not generally benefited from the discounts or special offers available from the large telecoms suppliers. The company’s shares have been traded on the London Stock Exchange since June 1997.

Telecom plus was the first company from outside the Energy Industry to receive a full licence from Ofgem to supply gas and electricity to the domestic market. A huge endorsement of the systems, management and financial strength of the business.

In 2002 Telecom plus launched the Utility Warehouse, an exciting new brand to encompass all its great value services. In 2003, this became the Utility Warehouse Discount Club.

Through the Utility Warehouse Discount Club, Telecom plus supply customers with essential services used by virtually everyone, so the opportunity for growth is almost unlimited.
The Company's objective is to save their customers money by giving them significantly better value on services they were previously receiving from monopoly suppliers like BT, British Gas and the regional electricity companies. Telecom plus use the collective buying power of lots of individual small users to negotiate bulk-buying deals with major suppliers, passing the benefit back to their customers.

Currently there is an opportunity to make money simply by recommending to potential customers a way of saving money on their telephone bills, internet access, mobile phone bills, gas usage and electricity usage – saving money on services they are already using. In the future, Telecom plus intend to offer their customers savings on other essential services.

The UK market for these services is worth over £17 billion per annum, so the opportunity is truly enormous. By concentrating on a range of essential services used by virtually everyone, the opportunity for growth is almost unlimited. And by combining this strategy with the immensely successful strategy of personal recommendation, Telecom plus has created one of the UK’s most exciting business opportunities. The opportunity exists to build a substantial and growing income over the coming years, working with an ethical British company that is revolutionising the way people pay for their essential services.

Timing is everything – and the time is now! A few years ago, deregulation had not occurred; in a few years time itwill be an old story. Deregulation means that customers can now choose an alternative to the old monopoly suppliers for many of their services, and with this is an opportunity to be in at the beginning of this change.

Labels: company-information

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 8/11/2006 04:05:00 PM