Chief Executive’s Review Chief Executive, Chris Ambler is responsible for leading the development of Jersey Electricity’s strategy, as agreed by the Board, and delivering JE’s Vision to ‘inspire a zerocarbon future’. He is the leading Executive Director responsible for all business units and all corporate functions, including human resources, health and safety, strategy, and sustainability. He reflects on the past year and looks at the challenges and opportunities ahead. Another year in which our Island and the business have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of our core Values: Safety, Teamwork, Customer Focus, Reliability, Responsibility and Excellence. Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our people, our customers, and the community at large. I am therefore again very proud of the way our people have risen to the challenges of serving our customers, safely and reliably throughout the changing constraints of the pandemic, while progressing our strategic workstreams and completing several milestone projects which are crucial to delivering our Vision of inspiring a zero-carbon future. The flexibility and expertise of our people, and resilience of our assets has resulted in our joint highest supply reliability performance since 2008, with just five Customer Minutes Lost (CMLs)* while meeting our second highest demand of unit sales of 639 million, a 3% increase on last year’s 619 million kWhs. We have also managed to maintain prices for customers with no tariff rise since 1 October 2020, the start of the 2020/21 financial year, at a time when UK and European energy markets are in turmoil. Our next tariff rise of 4%, announced in October 2021, will come into effect on 1 January 2022, and at a level that is well below other benchmarks elsewhere.
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JERSEY ELECTRICITY
Financial performance
The 2.5% tariff rise delayed from 1 April 2020 until 1 October 2020, coupled with higher unit sales due to home working and a colder winter period, saw Energy revenues rise 5% to £89.8m (2020: £85.1m). Energy profit at £10.7m, was 13% below the £12.3m achieved in 2020, largely due to the non-cash £1.8m ex-gratia award for pensions in service in 2021. Excluding this, Energy profit increased from £12.3m to £12.5m this year. Another strong performance from our Retail business, Powerhouse.je, which has risen to the challenge of COVID-19, restricted supply chains and periods of lockdown this year, enjoyed an 11% increase in revenue to £19.8m (2020: £17.8m) leading to profits of £1.5m, a 30% rise on last year. Revenue from JEBS, our building services business, decreased from £3.8m in 2020 to £3.4m but was accompanied by a profit of £0.2m in line with 2020. Revenue in our other businesses, at £3.3m, was above the £2.7m delivered in 2020 with combined profit of £0.6m The £1.4m profit in our Property Division, excluding the impact of investment property revaluation, was £0.1m higher than last year. Our investment property portfolio moved up in value by £6.1m to £27.8m.
Customer focus
Customer focus is not only one of our core Values, but also a pillar of
our Vision and as such, is central to our success. We have this year successfully delivered three important projects that greatly improve and enhance our customer experience, while also enabling us to deepen our relationship and engagement with our customers. In December, we launched a new online payment platform giving our 3,900 Pay As You Go prepayment customers the convenience of being able to top up their electricity meters anytime anywhere without leaving their homes. The following month, we launched a new customer-centric and mobile compatible website designed around well-researched customer journeys, and at the end of March, we launched the first version of our innovative energy-saving app My JE. Within five months of launch over 10,000 Islanders were using the app which utilises and feeds back consumption data from our Smart Meter network to help customers better manage and reduce their energy consumption. Power utilities around the world are increasingly becoming digital businesses, offering energy intelligence as a service and we are at the forefront of this transformation. The app is under continuous development and is one of several on-going digital projects, led by our newly appointed Director of Technology, that will improve our operational efficiency and enhance the lives of customers, helping them on the journey to a zero-carbon future. Technology and social media have accelerated the rise in customer expectations. It was therefore pleasing to see another strong result in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) for the third year. A score of 78 was one point above last year and well above the average of UK utilities.
