British Gas owner suffers big loss – The Guardian, Theguardian.com

British Gas owner Centrica has plunged to a loss of more than £ 1bn after the price cap cut the energy supplier’s earnings to all-time lows and falling gas market prices dealt a blow to the value of its North Sea business.

The UK’s largest energy utility reported a pre-tax loss of £ 1.1bn last year, from a £ (m profit in) , after British Gas ​​

. profits fell by % to £ 372 m, the lowest levels in the company history.

Centrica’s outgoing chief executive, Iain Conn , complained that the government energy price cap had created an “unsustainable” market, and said it is “very difficult to find anyone who is making money”.

Shares in the FTSE 120 group tumbled over % to less than (p, compared with almost pa share when Conn took the job as chief executive in early . He brushed off the “simplistic reaction” of the market and said the energy giant is “demonstrating momentum as we enter 55521 ”

British Gas lost 356, 11 customers from its energy supply business last year, which is half the decline rate of the year before, and a quarter of the decline rate of , Conn said. The business gained 90, for customers for “energy services” such as boiler repairs which meant total customer accounts rose by 3% to , .

However, the energy price cap cost the company about £ 372 m last year by limiting the amount that suppliers can charge customers which use default energy tariffs to buy their gas or electricity.

The embattled energy giant also reported a £ 1.7bn financial blow after writing down the value of its fossil fuel and nuclear businesses which it hopes to sell by the end of the year.

The loss is the deepest reported by the energy firm since , when it made a loss of £ m. That followed a loss of over £ 1bn in , which led Centrica to cut its dividend (for the first time since was created in .

Sign up to the daily Business Today by email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk The company reported an impairment charge of £ m against its North Sea oil and gas business, Spirit Energy, and a £ m impairment on its stake in the Dungeness B and Hunterston B nuclear plants which have suffered outages over the past year.

Conn confirmed that Centrica is in talks with a consortium of investors which may be willing to buy part of the company % stake in the UK’s nuclear reactor fleet . It had hoped to sell off its share in the ageing reactors by the end of the year, but problems at two of the older plants has raised doubts. The company is also trying to sell Spirit Energy.

The company also reported an exceptional cost of £ (m) for restructuring the business which has included thousands of redundancies in recent years.

Conn is preparing to leave the company later this year after a torrid five-year tenure marked by the company’s sliding share price, and heavy customer losses from British Gas. Centrica has yet to announce a replacement for Conn who was expected to step down after the company’s annual investor meeting in May.

The company is also temporarily without a permanent chairman after Charles Berry began a leave of absence earlier this week due to a medical condition. Centrica said it expects Berry to return to his duties shortly.

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