A question for you - what does Telecom plus PLC have in common with Alliance & Leicester, Carphone Warehouse, Debenhams, EasyJet, Dominos Pizza, Ladbrokes, Mothercare, UK Coal, ITV and the Yell Group? Do you give up? The answer - as of today, like all of these (& 239 other) high-profile Company's, Telecom plus PLC has officially joined the FTSE 250! read more

Even with minimal market cap knowledge, no one would argue that this puts Telecom plus amongst some heavy weight company's, within an elite group that ranks 101st to 350th of largest companies on the London Stock Exchange, all with a combined market capitalisation of £161 billion (at the last count).

Interestingly, over that last 10 days, situations have arisen where potential new distributors have passed up the opportunity to join Telecom plus because they were either negatively influenced, stuck in their ways or simply ill-informed. One bought into fabricated spin from a well-known forum, another felt that we were an illegal pyramid scam and just last week a chap told me that his Dad had never heard of Telecom plus PLC and that he should 'keep safe' with his job of 20 years at Halfords. Yesterday, he and his Dad were made redundant!

It's time to stop being apologetic and defensive, to step-up and be 100% proud of what we are all a part of - an FTSE 250 Stock Market quoted major PLC, with a current market capitalisation of £230m. The Company has a new £9m 42,000 sq ft head office, with award winning customer service teams. Revenues are up by 25%, profit before tax is up by 55% and earnings per share are up 64%, and all of this during the UK's worst economic downturn in living history.

Labels: corporate-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 12/11/2008 09:48:00 AM

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

Hot off the press at Telecom plus, it has just been announced to Utility Warehouse Distributors that there will be changes to the Senior Management team.

Firstly, Andy McWilliams, Executive Services Director, will be leaving the Company at the end of February to take up a new role as director of home delivery at B&Q. The Company's new Executive Services Director will be Wayne Coupland, who is already a familiar face to many Utility Warehouse Distributors, as he has been a
core member of the Company's Senior Management Team for a number of years. Wayne initially joined Telecom plus as Business Development Director, where he successfully introduced gas, electricity and broadband into the Company's product range, before progressing to become Energy Director.

Secondly, Ravi Khanna, Customer Services Director, will be leaving the Company at the
end of February.

Telecom plus also announced their intention to recruit several additional key individuals over the course of the next few months to further enhance their already strong senior management team. This will include both a new Commercial Director and a Communications Director.

Labels: corporate-news, director-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 1/11/2007 11:55:00 PM

Telecom plus announce interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2006

Telecom plus PLC, the UK's leading low-cost multi-utility supplier (gas,electricity, telephony, internet), announces interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2006.

Financial and business highlights

• Turnover up 32% to £68.5m (2005: £51.9m)
• Profit before tax up 9% to £5.5m (2005: £5.1m)
• Net cash balance up £18.7m during the period
• Interim dividend of 2p per share (2005: Nil)
• Services provided up 5% to 521,000 during the period
• Launch of attractive new broadband packages
• Positive contribution from energy, with npower agreement protecting Telecom plus from fluctuations in wholesale energy markets

Peter Nutting, Chairman, said:

"The difficulties of last winter are now firmly behind us, and the business is now in excellent shape. We are confident of delivering results for the full year which exceed our previous best pre-tax profits of £10.5m to 31 March 2005, and we look forward to the future with renewed confidence."

Chairman's Statement

I am pleased to report significant progress in the development of our business during the period covered by these results.

Pre-tax profits rose by 9% to £5.5m (2005: £5.1m) on turnover which increased by 32% to £68.5m (2005: £51.9m). The reduction in gross margin from 26% to 22% is due to the changing sales mix within our business, where the proportion of turnover which is derived from energy and telephony line rental has increased to 59% (2005: 43%).

The number of services provided to our customers climbed to 521,000, an increase of 5% over the period, with the total customer base increasing marginally to
around 213,000 households. The absence of significant net customer growth mostly resulted from our decision to delay responding to the so-called "free" broadband offers launched by other companies during the spring and early summer, until the necessary network infrastructure to support such services was more widely available and had been properly tested.

On 17 September 2006, our annual Distributor conference was attended by around 2,500 of our business partners. We announced a number of important changes
including the launch of "BroadCall" (a new service available to all residential households in the UK from just £20 per month), which combines line rental,
broadband and attractive call prices within a single package. We also announced the introduction of "Free UK Calls" as a multi-service discount, replacing our previous "Cashback" scheme.

These changes were well received by those present, and the resultant increase in activity, particularly in respect of the number of new Distributors now joining the business each week, is an encouraging sign that customer growth will resume during the second half.

We have received a positive response to these changes from our customers, with many of them having already chosen to transfer additional services to us in
order to increase the value of the benefits they receive.

Our relationship with npower is progressing well, and we are achieving the positive contribution from supplying energy which we anticipated at the time the
transaction was announced earlier this year. We are now fully insulated from any fluctuations in the wholesale energy markets over the winter months, and look forward to a further positive contribution from our energy business during the second half.

Cash Flow and Dividend

Our cash balances increased by over £18 million during the period, reflecting the combination of strong underlying profits, the final unwinding of our
historic energy purchasing commitments following the transfer of buying responsibility to npower, and the positive seasonal cash flow swing from
supplying energy on "Budget Plan" (where a customer's expected annual energy consumption is divided into 12 equal monthly instalments).

The greater working capital expected to be absorbed by the business during the winter in funding Budget Plan, needs to be reflected in the timing of future
dividend payments. This means that the total amount we distribute to shareholders each year can be expected to be weighted towards the final dividend.

The Board have therefore decided to pay an interim dividend of 2p per share (2005: Nil) which will be made on 1 February 2007 to shareholders on the
register at the close of business on 12 January 2007.

Boardroom Changes

I am delighted to announce that Michael Pavia (60) has agreed to join the Board as a non-executive director and chairman of the audit committee with immediate effect. Michael is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), and has significant experience of the energy industry, having served on the Boards of LASMO, SEEBOARD and London Electricity. He is currently a non-executive director of Thames Water, British Nuclear Fuels PLC and WHAM Energy PLC, and is a member of the Council of the ICAEW.

I am sorry to announce that Stephen Davis has decided to step down as Finance Director in order to join Credo Group (U.K.) Limited, a private client wealth
management group, and will be leaving on 31 December 2006. Over the last 18 months he has played an important role in the development of the business,
particularly in establishing our relationship with npower, and we wish him well with his future career. Stephen will be succeeded as Finance Director by Richard Hateley (42) who joined the company in June 2006 as Head of Finance and Company Secretary and will join the Board on 31 December 2006. Richard qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young, and subsequently worked for a number of companies including Level (3) Communications, Kvaerner Group and Blue Circle.

Outlook

The difficulties of last winter are now firmly behind us, and the business is now in excellent shape. We are confident of delivering results for the full year which exceed our previous best pre-tax profits of £10.5m to 31 March 2005, and we look forward to the future with renewed confidence.

Peter Nutting
Chairman
13 December 2006

Labels: corporate-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 12/13/2006 11:55:00 AM

Telecom plus Plc (The Utility Warehouse) are due to announce their interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2006 on Wednesday 13 December 2006. It has been a good year for the Company and positive results are anticipated. In September, the Utility Warehouse launched an innovative and highly competitive broadband / line rental package called Broadcall. Earlier in the year, the Company reported a return to profitability, following the outsourcing of it's energy business to nPower.

Throughout the year, financial and other press has been positive. In August, Michael Jivkov of The Independent highlighted that during the last two years Telecom plus shares have lost 70% of their value and that following the Company's deal with npower, the Company has returned to profitability, with a dividend being announced at its full-year results in June.

A recovery is on the cards for Telecom plus. Chris Mills, the shrewd small-cap specialist who runs Atlantic Value LLP fund, certainly thinks so. He has quietly built up a 4 per cent stake in the company. According to Michael Jivkov, KBC Peel Hunt, the group's broker, expects it to make a profit of £8.3m this year. By 2008, this should have risen to more than £10m, leaving Telecom plus trading at just 10 times earnings, and making its stock worth a punt.

The Sunday Telegraph (16 July) says that Telecom plus, the utilities reseller, “could be worth another look”...“In February, Telecom plus outsourced its energy buying to npower, and now just does the marketing...the Company has a unique low-cost referral system for attracting new customers and has a low churn rate.

Further more, Ludbrook Research International (LRI) recently reported that the Utility Warehouse has not reached 10% of its potential size, further reporting that the Utility Warehouse will be one of the companies to lead the Shakeout boom in the UK, with sales of more than £500 million being possible within a decade.

Labels: corporate-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 12/08/2006 11:11:00 PM

Message from Charles Wigoder, Chief Executive, Telecom plus Plc. Published in Distributor Publication,News Plus - 19th May 2006.

What a great business this is! Since finalising our arrangements with npower, we can now focus all our resources on making this business bigger and better than ever. Our new retail energy prices are still below the cost in the wholesale markets, but our new arrangements mean that instead of losing money, our energy supply businesses are now profitable - and all our Distributors are benefiting from increased residual income payments as a result of both higher retail prices and also the payment of full-rate CVC on “energy only” customers. Our current prices are still extremely competitive and most households can achieve significant savings by moving their energy,telephony and internet services from their current suppliers, to The Utility Warehouse.

We've recently updated our Business Manual and introduced new training for SEs (to help them build their businesses to ED and beyond). We've also been running special BlackBerry training sessions to helpyou promote this increasingly essential communications tool. And we've launched new business energy tariffs, creating an enormous new potential income source which could transform your current earningsf rom Business Club customers.

We have also been focusing on increasing the number of services being taken by existing customers - our recent bill message in March to around 80,000 of our Club members who did not yet have Home Phone Line Rental resulted in a conversion rate of over 5% - so we will be rolling this message out tothe remainder of our customer base during May, as well as repeating it again in June to those customers in the original sample who did not respond last time. And of course, Distributors earn higher CVC on Home Phone customers who have transferred their line rental to us. We also ran a special offerpromoting our broadband package in the April bills, and have extended this offer so you can make it available to new customers as well until the end of June. Unfortunately for technical reasons, this offercannot be extended to existing broadband customers.

The recent broadband launch from Carphone Warehouse got enormous publicity - you can only admire the professionalism of their PR team. The truth of course doesn't quite match the hype...to get their “Free Broadband” you have to pay £21 per month for their line rental and calls package (which is significantly more expensive than our equivalent line rental and calls offer). Not to mention the £30 connection charge, the 18-month contract or the £70 disconnection fee. All the same, we do not intend to sit back and let them steal either customers or market share from us. We are committed to delivering great value to our customers - we've done so for over 9 years now, and we are not intending to stop anytime soon! It will however take time to put in place new commercial partnerships and to develop a new range of broadband packages in response to this latest move by Carphone Warehouse...watch this space!

We are seeing great attendance levels at COPs and COE training sessions which are being translated into increased activity by those who have attended, with a significant increase in the number of new Distributors joining the business and a corresponding increase in customer numbers.……and our fantastic holiday promotion is once again within the reach of every current Distributor. Those of you currently on track haveless than 6 months to go before guaranteeing your place on our exclusive 6 Star luxury cruise - with a number of places still available for those who were unable to achieve the qualifying criteria during the firstfew months.

Our business is now going from strength to strength, with more and more people beginning to appreciate our unique business model and the benefits it offers. We have some fantastic plans we intend to implement over the coming years and with the security of our new energy arrangements, can focus all our management attention on improving our internal systems and making our services even more attractive to our customers. There has never been a better time to be involved with Telecom plus.

For the benefit of all those who have joined the business over the last few months, together with anyone who does not receive our regular “Hot News” updates, we are including within this issue all the main announcements which have been published since our last main issue of News plus. Finally, make sure you put 17 September 2006 in your diary, and reserve seats for yourself and your teamat this year's Express Day before we sell out. We have some fantastic announcements planned, combined with training and new ideas to help you grow your business. You will also have the opportunity to meet both our senior management team and all the successful Distributors and leaders in the Network. It's a great day, and the best way to give your business a lift this Autumn. Don't miss it!

Charles Wigoder
Chief Executive

Labels: corporate-news, director-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 6/15/2006 01:31:00 AM

Telecom plus Directors have expressed great confidence in the future prospects for the company now that the wholesale energy issues have been permanently resolved, together with their intention to remain competitive in the broadband market with new service(s) to be launched later this year once the necessary supporting infrastructure has been built.

Financial & business highlights

• Turnover up 33% to £136.3m (2005: £102.5m)
• Loss before tax of £1.6m (2005: profit £10.5m)
• Final dividend of 1.0p (2005: 6.0p)
• Elimination of exposure to wholesale energy prices
• Number of services provided increased 23% to 496,000 (2005: 402,000)
• Significant increase in value of investment in Oxford Power Holdings

Peter Nutting, Chairman, said:

"We are still the UK’s only fully- integrated supplier of a wide range of attractivelypriced
utility services, combined with a distribution channel of proven ability in cost
effectively gathering significant numbers of high quality new customers each month.
This combination continues to give us a considerable competitive advantage in the
domestic market. With the recent elimination of our exposure to wholesale energy
prices, the directors are confident that the current year will see a return to overall
profitability and a resumption of growth in our dividend payments to shareholders."

Chairman's statement

As you will already be aware, we experienced very difficult trading conditions last
year due to the extreme volatility and record prices in the wholesale energy markets
during November and December. Indeed, the losses we experienced in our gas
business alone during those two months reached almost £8m, more than off- setting
the satisfactory profits of £5.5m achieved during the first half- year.

This led to our decision to enter into the transaction with npower which we announced
in February 2006. Although not completed until 31 March 2006, it became effective
retrospectively from 1 January 2006 in all financial respects, and enabled our energy
business to return to profitability during the last quarter of the financial year. The
structure of the transaction preserves our unique business model from a customer
perspective as a fully integrated multi- utility supplier, whilst passing the substantive
risks and rewards of hedging and buying energy to a larger business partner. In
future, we expect to make a small positive margin from supplying energy to our
customers, albeit at a lower level than anticipated when we entered the energy
business some years ago, irrespective of the level (or volatility) of wholesale energy
prices, or fluctuations in demand caused by unseasonably cold or warm weather.

Notwithstanding these issues, I am pleased to report that we achieved considerable
growth during the year, with turnover increasing by 33% to £136m (2005: £102m).
This was due to a combination of higher retail energy prices and growth of over 23%
to 496,000 (2005: 402,000) in the number of services being provided to our
customers.

However, as a result of the losses in our gas business during November and
December, combined with exceptional costs of around £1.9m associated with entering
into the new npower arrangements, we incurred an overall pre-tax loss for the year of
£1.6m (2005: profit £10.5m). Notwithstanding this small loss, we are proposing a
final dividend of 1p for the year, reflecting our strong balance sheet and confidence in
the future prospects for the business.

The final dividend will be paid on 4 August 2006 to shareholders on the register at the
close of business on 7 July 2006 and is subject to approval by shareholders at the
Company’s Annual General Meeting which is being held on 12 July 2006.

Important highlights during the year included the successful launch of our new
Business Club in August 2005, which we anticipate will become an increasingly
important growth area for the Company over the coming years; substantial growth in
the number of broadband customers we supply; and the extremely encouraging takeup
by both existing and new customers of the opportunity to transfer their home
phone line rental to us.

Since the year-end, International Power Plc has announced the purchase from existing
shareholders (other than Telecom plus) of a 30% stake in Oxford Power Holdings Ltd
("OPH"). This transaction places an implicit value of £4.8m on our 20% investment
in OPH compared with a total cost of £1m.

At the AGM we will be saying good-bye to John Levin who is not standing for reelection
as a Director. He was one of the original founders of the business and made a
significant contribution to the management of the Company during its start- up period.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the people involved with
Telecom plus who have played such an important role in developing the business this
year, in particular our extremely hard-working head office team and our network of
Independent Distributors, who display great skill and determination in continuing to
grow our business.

Outlook

Since the year end, Carphone Warehouse (through their Talk Talk brand) have been
attracting considerable publicity for their new combined broadband and telephony
package. Although it is still early days, we have seen little effect from this offer on
our own business, either in relation to growth in our own broadband base or on churn.

We are committed to maintaining a competitive position in this sector, and expect to
be launching a new range of broadband packages later this year once the proportion of
local exchanges which are unbundled has increased. We are confident the
competitive advantages provided by our integrated business model and low-cost route
to market will enable us to generate an acceptable return from supplying this service
in future.

Within our telephony business, margins have started to edge upwards recently as we
negotiate lower wholesale prices with our partners. Our position has been helped by
consolidation within the sector, which has made the call volumes under our control
increasingly sought after.

We are still the UK’s only fully integrated supplier of a wide range of attractivelypriced
utility services, combined with a distribution channel of proven ability in cost
effectively gathering significant numbers of high quality new cus tomers each month.
This combination continues to give us a considerable competitive advantage in the
domestic market. With the recent elimination of our exposure to wholesale energy
prices, the directors are confident that the current year will see a retur n to overall
profitability and a resumption of progressive growth in our dividend payments to
shareholders.

Peter Nutting
Chairman
6 June 2006

Labels: corporate-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 6/06/2006 10:25:00 AM

International Power plc ("IPR") has today announced the purchase of a 30% stake
in Oxford Power Holdings Ltd ("OPH") for £7.25m. The shares have been purchased
from existing shareholders other than Telecom Plus. The price paid represents a
current value for OPH of approximately £24 million.

Telecom Plus has today exercised its warrants and anti-dilution rights at a cost
of £8,694 to increase its shareholding in OPH to 20%. The total cost of its
investment in OPH now amounts to £1.05m, compared with the implicit value of
£4.8m placed on it following the investment by IPR.

Labels: corporate-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 5/11/2006 05:54:00 PM

Charles Wigoder, Chief Executive of The Utility Warehouse (Telecom plus Plc), has today announced news that a long-term management services agreement with npower (one of Europe’s largest utility suppliers) has been implemented.

In a volatile wholsale energy market, where prices have on some days been more than 400% higher than usual levels, resulting financial burdens had been of increasing concern. Charles Wigoder commented that if left unchecked, they would have threatened the future viability of the entire business.

Whilst ensuring that Utility Warehouse Distributors no longer need to worry about wholesale energy prices and maintaining the unique benefits of being Europe's only single billing multi-utility provider, the npower agreement meets three other key objectives:

• Ensuring The Utility Warehouse can continue to provide existing customers with their unique multi-utility proposition, on a single integrated monthly bill.
• Ensuring the continued payment of residual income to Utility Warehouse Distributors on
  existing and future energy customers.
• The continued offering of the full current range of Utility Warehouse services to new
  customers (including the unique "triple value guarantee" for energy).

Whilst this agreement gives npower an option to aquire a 29% shareholding in Telecom plus, Charles Wigoder has also announced new guarantees to protect the long term security of indidual distributor businesses:

• Npower have agreed that if they acquire control, they will not make any changes to the compensation plan which reduces the rates and/or number of levels at which Utility Warehouse distributors are paid residual income, in respect of all customers who are taking our services at that time.
• Our main attraction to npower is the Company's unique business model and Distributor network. Utility Warehouse are a significant sales channel with huge potential for growth. If npower acquire control, while they could decide to review the best way to incentivise and reward the network in respect of new customers gathered after that date, it would clearly not make commercial sense for them to do anything which damaged morale or had the effect of reducing distributor activity.
• The management services agreement with npower is for a minimum of five years. In the unlikely event they decide not to renew it, they will become responsible for billing energy to those customers themselves, but continue to pay Utility Warehouse commission on the
  customers energy usage in perpetuity. This ensures the continued payment of residual income to distributors in accordance with the Company's compensation plan.

Overall, the npower agreement has been very well received by existing Utility Warehouse Distributors, with a view being expressed that our partnerships with npower and TMobile offer excellent testimony to the strength of both Telecom plus as a company and business opportunity.

Further Utility Warehouse business opportunity information.

Labels: corporate-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 2/16/2006 01:46:00 PM

Telecom plus PLC, the UK’s leading low-cost integrated multi- utility (gas, electricity, fixed
telephony, mobile telephony, broadband), announces interim results for the six months ended
30 September 2005.

Financial and business highlights:

• Turnover up 21% to £51.9m (2004: £42.8m)
• Profit before tax of £5.1m (2004: £6.6m)
• Subscriber base increased to 213,000 customers, taking 460,000 services
• Significant progress in providing fixed telephony line rental and broadband
• Distributor base has continued to grow steadily, and now exceeds 16,000
• Directors exploring alternative strategies to control losses in gas business

Peter Nutting, Chairman, said:

"We remain focused on organic growth, providing a range of competitively priced utility
services to a steadily growing customer base. Despite much talk by other utility and media
companies of the advantages of so-called triple and quadruple "Plays", we remain the only
organisation thus far to have successfully implemented this strategy to the benefit of both
ourselves and our customers."

CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

I am able to report further growth across all areas of our business, in the first set of interim
results we have presented under the new International Financial Reporting Standards
("IFRS").

Turnover for the six months to 30 September 2005 has increased by 21% to £51.9m
(2004: £42.8m), our subscriber base has increased to 213,000 customers, and the number of
services we supply to them has risen to over 460,000. This is equivalent to an average of 2.16
services per customer (2004: 1.85), and reflects the continuing success of our "Discount Club"
concept in which 60% of our customers are now members. The principal benefits of this
unique multi-service approach are clearly demonstrated by our levels of churn and bad debt,
both of which are believed to be significantly below those typically achieved by our
competitors.

Pre-tax profits during the first six months of this financial year fell to £5.1m compared with
the same period last year (2004: £6.6m). There were three principal reasons for this reduction:
first, an increase to around £1.9m (2004: £1.0m) in customer acquisition costs during the
period, mainly due to the doubling in size of our broadband base to around 25,000
connections; secondly, a one-off increase in our underlying administration costs associated
with a significant strengthening of our senior management team; and finally, the fact that fixed
telephony revenues from calling mobile phones were significantly higher during the
comparative period last year, before industry wide price reductions which took effect in
September 2004.

Our Distributor base has also continued to experience steady growth, and now exceeds 16,000
(2004: 14,300). Their continuing contribution and commitment to the growth and success of
the business remains invaluable.

We have made considerable further progress in taking greater control of our customers’
telephony services, by assuming responsibility for providing the phone line as well as cheaper
calls. The elimination of the historic BT relationship has been warmly welcomed by our
customers, who now benefit from lower prices, simpler billing and better customer service
than they had previously experienced, with around 75% of eligible new fixed telephony
customers now choosing the complete service package.

Although margins from providing Broadband and Line Rental to residential customers are
currently unsatisfactory due to the uncompetitive wholesale prices available from BT, this is
expected to improve over the next 18 months as Local Loop Unbundling gathers pace. This is
anticipated to reduce costs significantly from their current level, particularly for companies
such as our own which are providing both line rental and broadband to the same domestic
premises.

Within our mobile business, we have recently simplified our tariffs and handset proposition.
We now have a straightforward and extremely competitive mobile offer, which will deliver
continuing savings and excellent value to our customers, whilst enabling us to maintain an
acceptable margin.

In August, we launched the Utility Warehouse Discount Club for Business, offering a range of
services specifically tailored towards small and medium sized businesses. This was well
received by our Distributors, over 2,500 of whom have since attended training courses to
enable them to promote these new services. The strong early take- up of these services gives
us considerable confidence that this new Club will make a material contribution to our
business over the coming years, as it builds on the experience of this sector we gained through
purchasing TML some three years ago. TML continues to generate a satisfactory return on
our investment.

Oxford Power Holdings (trading as Opus, and in which we hold an effective 20% equity
interest) continues to experience considerable success in growing its market share,
notwithstanding challenging market conditions. Indeed, it is now profitable and in accordance
with the new IFRS requirements, we have consolidated our share of these profits (amounting
to £112,000) within our figures for the first time.

In my last statement I reported we had raised £12.1m (net of expenses) to strengthen our
capital base, which took our cash reserves as at 30 September 2005 to £21m, with no external
debt. We also recently concluded a long term working capital facility with Barclays Bank plc.
Together, these should enable us to implement a systematic hedging programme to
progressively align our wholesale gas costs with those of our main competitors, although this
process has not yet started due to the forward cost of gas remaining unacceptably high.

Outlook and the current state of the gas market

We substantially increased our retail prices for both gas and electricity at the beginning of
October 2005, repositioning ourselves with a "best value" rather than "cheapest" price
promise. This resulted in only a small loss of customers, providing further evidence of the
commercial logic behind our unique multi- utility business model.

These price rises (of around 30% for gas cus tomers) were expected to substantially reduce our
gas losses this winter. However the increasing volatility and unprecedented prices seen
recently in the wholesale gas markets (where by way of example the "December" and "Day-
Ahead" commodity prices doubled and trebled respectively in the space of less than two
weeks during November) is having a significant impact on our business.

On 23 November 2005, the Company therefore issued a trading statement drawing attention to
this development, making shareholders aware of the effect it would have on our results for the
full year. Profits are now expected to be significantly lower than last year and are also subject
to considerable uncertainty. Although wholesale gas prices have since started to ease slightly,
that uncertainty remains, as we are currently purchasing the majority of our gas for this winter
on a short-term basis.

The directors are therefore actively exploring alternative strategies to control the level of
losses arising from our gas business. Our preferred outcome would be one which enabled us to
achieve a consistent margin in future on what remains an important part of our multi-service
proposition. We will provide shareholders with further information about this as soon as
possible.

In the circumstances, the directors believe it would therefore be prudent to defer a decision on
the payment of an interim dividend until the outlook for the full year has become more clear.
In the meantime we remain focused on organic growth, providing a range of competitively
priced utility services to a steadily growing customer base. Despite much talk by other utility
and media companies of the advantages of so-called triple and quadruple "Plays", we remain
the only organisation thus far to have successfully implemented this strategy to the benefit of
both ourselves and our customers.

Peter Nutting
Chairman
13 December 2005

https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/store/Gresham_Interim_051213.pdf

Labels: corporate-news

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 12/13/2005 10:53:00 AM