AGL has posted impressive half year results, growing its revenues by 7 per cent to $3.2 billion for the 6 months to 31 December 2009. AGL’s underlying profit increased by a whopping 22 per cent to $235 million for the half-year.

AGL’s retail business was a significant contributor to the strong results. Despite a milder winter period where gas sales were down by 13 per cent on the previous year, AGL managed to increase its profitability largely thanks to 16-20 per cent increases in the regulated retail electricity tariffs in NSW and Queensland in July 2009 as well as market price increases in Victoria and South Australia.

AGL now has 3.22 million retail customers, up by 23,800 for the half year. Data on the number of customers lost during the period was not available but AGL reported an average customer churn rate of 14.8 per cent, which compares favourably to the 17 per cent average churn reported by Origin Energy last week and the quoted industry average churn rate of 18 per cent.

You can read more about these results in AGL’s Investor Presentation.