The increase in the cost of the guarantees required of these companies has triggered their financial risk to historical levels
The banks have quarantined the electricity companies. The lack of control of prices in the energy market has triggered the financial stress of independent electricity sales companies, those that are not integrated into large energy groups such as Iberdrola or Endesa. These companies are being forced to present growing bank guarantees to maintain their activity, in an already harsh environment that has led them to narrow their margins.
Financial entities have been closely monitoring the evolution of small electricity companies for months, according to banking sources consulted by EL MUNDO. In the last twelve months, 43 electricity marketers have ceased their activity. Some have been discharged voluntarily, others, only after the Ministry for the Ecological Transition decreed their disqualification. The cause, in most cases, is purely economic. A lack of financial muscle to deal with escalating prices and the regulatory demands of the business.
Independent marketers had been gaining ground on the giants in the sector for years thanks to an aggressive low-price policy. The upward spiral in the wholesale electricity market (pool in the jargon of the sector) has given an ax to the margins of these companies, which have been forced to acquire energy on the daily market at exorbitant prices to supply their customers for a consideration agreed long before the rise.
The second derivative has been increased cost of bank guarantees that these companies must present to operate in the market, both the electrical networkthe system manager, such as OMI, the company that manages the electricity market. The amount of these guarantees is revised with the evolution of the prices of the pool.
This increase in bank guarantees, added to the bite to business margins, has pushed many companies to incur specific breaches in the presentation of guarantees to the company chaired by Beatriz Corredor, which collects and pays guarantees through MEFF, the electricity derivatives market.
Faced with the first fault, Red Eléctrica reacts by demanding extra guarantees from the infringing company, which prevents the companies from taking oxygen from the very moment that they violate the deadline for making the deposits. In some cases, this leads a company to a spiral of non-compliance from which it is difficult to get out.
In the most striking cases, the volume of guarantees that these companies maintain with OMIE and Red Eléctrica reaches quintuple your turnover, according to industry sources. Some groups have blocked guarantees amounting to more than 30 million euros.
The impact on market perception is significant. Some independent marketers they have multiplied by eight their financial riskreaching historic levels almost overnight, solely due to the effect of rising prices in the energy markets, according to financial sources consulted by this newspaper.
Only those that the crisis surprised with a solid financial situation are managing to withstand the storm. These ratios, added to the history of bankruptcies accumulated by the sector, have led financial entities to exercise extreme vigilance over these companies.
This situation threatens to reverse the process of liberalization of the sale of electricity. When an independent company closes down, its clients are transferred to a reference marketer, a category held by only eight companies in Spain, half of which are in the hands of four giants: Endesa, Iberdrola, naturgy, TotalEnergies y Repsol.
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