Leclerc targets three million customers within three years

/ Financial News / Wednesday, 19 September 2018 07:46

The distribution giant E. Leclerc intends to conquer three million customers in three years with its electricity supply offer, a more ambitious goal than expected, announced its CEO on his blog.

By announcing at the end of July his arrival on the market, Michel-Edouard Leclerc said he wanted to reach this target by 2025.

“The objective is to sell green electricity, to be the cheapest in the market sustainably and to serve three million households in metropolitan France three years from now,” Leclerc writes.

At the end of July, he said he wanted to become “quickly the alternative supplier of reference” to the historical operator, EDF, and target 10% of the market.

Leclerc’s offer was officially launched and its users can either benefit from a 10% discount compared to the regulated tariff, “deducted immediately on their bill”, or benefit from -20% “credited in Leclerc tickets (vouchers, note) on their fidelity card”, explains the distributor in his press kit.

“We are working gradually. For the moment, the drop in prices is due to the low margins of E. Leclerc,” underlings Leclerc again on his blog. “We will be able to buy in a cheaper rate with the increase of our market share, and we will be able to quickly benefit customers from economies of scale,” he explained.

He intends to propose “later on” this offer to companies, without specifying in what time period.

Another distributor, Casino, via its online trading platform Cdiscount, has already positioned itself in the electricity market, by launching in October 2017 an offer in partnership with GreenYellow.

In a statement, Casino's subsidiary recalls that it “remains (...) the cheapest energy supply on the market”, proposing a “discount up to 20% on the price of the kWh, directly to the French electric bill”.

“The rate of subscriptions to our offer has doubled in June 2018 and, every day, there are several hundred homes that switch to Cdiscount Energy,” says Emmanuel Grenier, CEO of Cdiscount.

According to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), 6.25 million French households, or 19% of the population, were in “market” supply at the end of June, and almost all of them had chosen an alternative supplier to the incumbent operator.

Cdiscount aside, Engie, Total or Eni are also among the leading alternative electricity suppliers.

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