Announcing its first-half financial results in Hong Kong on Monday, CLP Holdings, the owner of Australia’s third largest energy supplier TRUenergy, reportedly said that contrary to speculation it had gained rather than lost customers in its recently acquired New South Wales energy retailing business, Energy Australia.

According to The Australian newspaper, Andrew Brandler, CEO of CLP, said that Energy Australia had withstood AGL’s attempts to poach its customers in the greater Sydney metropolitan area. AGL earlier this year announced its intention to aggressively acquire customers in NSW following its failure to acquire at a reasonable price one of the three NSW electricity suppliers privatised by the NSW Government late last year.

We have heard reports of very aggressive door-to-door sales activity in NSW over the last six months by several electricity providers, despite a slight reduction in the permitted door-knocking hours following the introduction of the new Australian Consumer Law earlier this year.  The real question is whether Energy Australia’s success in “retaining” customers is due to aggressive discounting to “save” customers poached by other retailers such as AGL or whether Energy Australia has itself been aggressively door-knocking to acquire new customers to replace the ones it lost to other retailers.

As discussed in our post earlier this week, Australian Power & Gas, Dodo Power & Gas and Red Energy have all launched very attractive new electricity offers in New South Wales over the last few months. It will be exciting to watch what transpires over the coming year in NSW.