British Gas Made Even More Profit Because We Used More Gas...

[SDK^]

Other companies may have higher profit margins but we are talking about one of life's essentials here.

Food is essential yet supermarkets make profits.

Profits are required to drive innovation and ensure the investment is there, thus enabling your supply to be reliable and sustainaible now and into the future.
People unhappy with these profits should stop moaning & do something about it - go and source your own energy supplies.

 

[PiKe]

10 to 1 that the people actually moaning are in-fact the ones that can comfortably afford to pay the prices too.

 

[alx]

Isn't there an investigation taking place about manipulating the prices?

Can you imagine if companies manipulated things for profit, that would never happen, not even something as important as LIBOR would be fiddled.

I thought that was end user prices, not wholesale prices?

 

[Danthus]

I thought that was end user prices, not wholesale prices?

Isn't the point still valid, the pursuit of profits corrupts some people.

 

[Danthus]

10 to 1 that the people actually moaning are in-fact the ones that can comfortably afford to pay the prices too.

Sorry for thinking about others.

 

[Mr Jones]

10 to 1 that the people actually moaning are in-fact the ones that can comfortably afford to pay the prices too.

And the same odds for people not moaning aren't the ones paying the bill directly.

I can afford it now doesn't mean I could a few years back. Since I've moved out 2008, my gas and elec bills rose fastest whilst I kept a steady moderate use, extra jumper during colder days/nights.

 

[The Geezer]

As a British Gas consumer for both Gas and Electricity, I find the year on year on price increases difficult to pallette especially as they are always above inflation.

I really don't understand the problem of some of the commentators here, as a consumer why should I be held to ransom for things that I need to live and I would say fuel is a neccessaity for life in the UK.

I am not recieving above inflation pay increases to pay for the rise in fuel costs - I pray for the pre-Maggie days.

Lets be real £606m profit is significant for domestic fuel but they are not the only supplier of domestic fuel what will the total profit be of all the suppliers added together thats' got to be in the billions. Look at the big picture and I'm sure you'll work out we are being stiffed at every turn.

 

[alx]

As a British Gas consumer for both Gas and Electricity, I find the year on year on price increases difficult to pallette especially as they are always above inflation.

I really don't understand the problem of some of the commentators here, as a consumer why should I be held to ransom for things that I need to live and I would say fuel is a neccessaity for life in the UK.

I am not recieving above inflation pay increases to pay for the rise in fuel costs - I pray for the pre-Maggie days.

Lets be real £606m profit is significant for domestic fuel but they are not the only supplier of domestic fuel what will the total profit be of all the suppliers added together thats' got to be in the billions. Look at the big picture and I'm sure you'll work out we are being stiffed at every turn.

Why does everyone just look at the profit figure without taking into considering turnover/profit margin? A single profit figure is pretty meaningless.

 

[Danthus]

Why does everyone just look at the profit figure without taking into considering turnover/profit margin? A single profit figure is pretty meaningless.

Because turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.

 

[The Geezer]

Because turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.

What he said

 

[Repta]

Because turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.

Can you really not understand why it is important to take into account turnover when talking about profits?

 

[Danthus]

Can you really not understand why it is important to take into account turnover when talking about profits?

Explain it to me, Amazon made a loss of $273 million on a turnover of £13 billion.

Turnover isn't their issue, profit is.

 

[SpeedFreak]

Profit can be manipulated so it's not an ideal performance measure, ask Starbucks....

 

[Burnsy2023]

Profit can be manipulated so it's not an ideal performance measure, ask Starbucks....

Indeed, you need to look at one off costs, and one off profits. A company that makes a huge profit one year because they had to sell high value assets to cover debts is not a heathy company. Kodak would be an example of this.

To really understand the health of the company you need to study the whole of the accounts, not single headline figures in isolation.

 

[alx]

Explain it to me, Amazon made a loss of $273 million on a turnover of £13 billion.

Turnover isn't their issue, profit is.

It can give indicators to the 'health' of a company - the higher the profit to turnover ratio the better (in general).

A company could have what people deem a high profit (lets say £1 billion) but a turnover of say £200 billion. If we just look at profit it looks great, but looking at the turnover as well shows a very low profit margin. Somewhere the company is 'losing' £199 billion via its overheads. A relatively small % change in this figure could then result in the company losing money and working at a loss.

I know it's a simplified, exaggerated example but it shows a point - by ignoring the turnover you aren't able to see how big an effect changing overheads could have on a companies ability to be profitable.

 

[Russinating]

Why not? Should companies that produce food and drinks not make a profit, what about construction firms who build houses? There's little incentive to provide a good or service if you're not making a profit which is why the vast majority of non-profit organisations are government run, not privately run.

I said the opposite. You read my post wrong.

 

[Monkeymatt]

As a British Gas consumer for both Gas and Electricity, I find the year on year on price increases difficult to pallette especially as they are always above inflation.

I really don't understand the problem of some of the commentators here, as a consumer why should I be held to ransom for things that I need to live and I would say fuel is a neccessaity for life in the UK.

I am not recieving above inflation pay increases to pay for the rise in fuel costs - I pray for the pre-Maggie days.

Lets be real £606m profit is significant for domestic fuel but they are not the only supplier of domestic fuel what will the total profit be of all the suppliers added together thats' got to be in the billions. Look at the big picture and I'm sure you'll work out we are being stiffed at every turn.

Why do people always use the phrase "above inflation" to make price increases seem unjustified? Some goods and services will increase in price above the rate of inflation and some will increase at a rate lower than inflation, it's natural in a free market. If you want to call price rises unjustifiable then I would recommend looking at the costs of producing the good/service.

At the end of the day you can blame the likes of British Gas all you want but all they are doing is profit maximising, something that all companies seek to do. The ones you should really be blaming are Ofgem, it is their job to regulate the market and ensure that all the firms in the market are acting competitively and they have failed to do so.

 

[PlacidCasual]

Centrica made approx £50 profit per customer per year. Is that really so much for providing the service they do?

That profit is probably less than 5% per customer.
35% of the cost will be the fuel.
25% of cost will be transport, national and local grids and their profit.
20% is in Government costs, renewable subsidies, tax etc.
15% is operating costs
5% profit

All they need to do is invest billions per year, employ 10,000's, manage signifcant technical, safety and commercial risk, by turning bilions of pounds of raw materials into gas and leccy, whilst paying their owners a modest dividend and paying off their large debts.

The public do not understand the power utilities. The ministers have the power to change the entire profitability of massive companies at the stroke of a pen and have done so far too many times since privatisation. The power industry is so heavily regulated they can only play the game as it's put before them.

Why aren't people complaining about the Government ****ing money away to secure huge profits and subsidies for wind farms.

 

[hurfdurf]

You dont HAVE to use it.
Some people are simply saying its a life necessity, yet its only the last hundred years, and for some a lot less that its even been available.

Technically gas and electricity are luxuries.

There was an article a few months back about a guy who was only just being connected to mains electric.

I too am a robot. "Techinically". Thats some spergy logic there M8.

 

[hurfdurf]

Food is essential yet supermarkets make profits.

Profits are required to drive innovation and ensure the investment is there, thus enabling your supply to be reliable and sustainaible now and into the future.
People unhappy with these profits should stop moaning & do something about it - go and source your own energy supplies.

That would be all well and good if the capital was available for the common man to do such a thing, unfortunately its all been tied up by the monopolies now.