“We have an organic growth strategy for the market in Romania. We don’t want to grow overnight,” says Dan Dragos Dragan, chief executive officer of Repower Romania.
Dragan took the position in 2007, the year Repower arrived in Romania. He had previously worked for Petprod, another energy trader, whose owner was Jack Cutisteanu.
Repower consolidated its local presence in 2010 when it took over Elcomex EN, an electricity trader held by businessman Ion Grecu. Elcomex EN saw a spectacular rise in revenue, going from EUR20,000 in 2004 to EUR70 million the year it changed hands.
Although some companies in the electricity trading business are still seeing a surge in revenue, Repower says its strategy is rather cautious.
The company posted 457 million lei (EUR103 million) revenue and RON0.1 million net profit last year. Revenue was 18% lower than in 2013, while net profit was almost 30 times smaller than the year before.
Dragan says that sales increased in the first half both because of higher traded volumes and because of the new customers gained.
“We posted 10% growth on the year-ago period and are seeing a resurgence in the consumption of processing and automotive industry customers.”
Repower’s most important customers include Mega Image, Nestle, British American Tobacco and Athenee Palace Hilton.
“We’ve had a 90% customer retention rate in the past five years,” Dragan said.
According to the reports of Romania’s energy market watchdog ANRE, Repower accounted for 4.93% of the competitive energy market, where consumers negotiate their own contracts. This means the company supplied about 1.4 TWh of electricity or almost 3% of Romania’s energy consumption.
Repower is the third largest private energy trader in Romania, after Tinmar Ind of businessman Augustin Oancea (12.57% market share) and aluminum smelter Alro. Alro, however, operates as its own energy supplier since it is Romania’s largest power consumer.
The company is also interested in expanding into the natural gas business.
“We are positive we will start gas supplying. We are now analyzing the market.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)