Romande Energie : Three power suppliers team up to form a new national services company with an office in Morges

Press release

Morges, Münchenstein, Zurich, 27 June 2018

Three power suppliers team up to form a new national services company with an office in Morges

Romande Energie and its business partners (acting through their subsidiary Romande Energie Commerce SA) are joining forces with EBM AG (Genossenschaft Elektra Birseck) and EKZ (Elektrizitätswerke des Kantons Zürich) AG - both major power distributors in German-speaking Switzerland - to form a new national company that will offer optimal service to each one's customers while at the same time enhancing the efficiency of these operations. Nearly 900,000 customers (20% of the Swiss market) will be managed from 1 January 2019. The new entity's 170 employees will be based at offices in Morges, Zurich and Münchenstein.

The company, which will take the form of a joint venture, will gain from EBM's experience in the deregulated market, EKZ's expertise in efficient customer-relations management and Romande Energie Commerce's strong record in satisfying the many interests of its regional partners for over a decade. The founders' desire to achieve operational excellence by working together, in parallel with their incumbent businesses, will result in a competitive entity able to excel in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The new company will develop resources to respond to shifting customer needs and expectations, offering solutions at the forefront of industry standards. Efficiency gains will be reinvested in developing new customer-relations technology.

The founding companies do not overlap in terms of catchment area and serve either French or German language communities. They are structured similarly and are guided by a comparable business ethos and managerial outlook. The solutions they market are also quite similar, offering a firm foundation for developing business together. The new entity will host the companies' IT systems, operational processes such as billing, as well as call centres and receivables collection. It will be the largest provider of customer services in the Swiss energy sector, harnessing the expertise of its shareholders to innovate in customer relations with the help of new technology.

Formation of this new company is contingent upon COMCO approval. Its corporate organisational structure will be announced by this autumn. Its name cannot be publicly disclosed at the present time.

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Note to editorial desks

This press release is being issued outside the trading hours of the SIX Swiss Exchange as required by the SIX Listing Rules on ad hoc publicity.

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Contacts

Romande Energie Group is the leading electricity distributor in Western Switzerland. Through its subsidiary Romande Energie Commerce, it supplies more than 300,000 end-customers directly in approximately 300 municipalities in the cantons of Vaud, Valais, Fribourg and Geneva. Its core business lines are the generation, distribution and marketing of power together with energy services.

Priorities are liaising with customers to ensure high-quality services in line with expectations; guaranteeing a reliable, sustainable and competitive supply of energy; developing proprietary power generation through priority investments in renewable energy; and promoting innovative energy-efficiency solutions. These priorities are contained in the Group's vision of facilitating and hastening the energy revolution in Switzerland.

Romande Energie's corporate social responsibility policy systematically guides its approach to business.www.romande-energie.ch

EBM at a glance

Founded in 1897, EBM is a privately organised cooperative that operates in the energy sector, primarily in Switzerland, France and other neighbouring countries. It provides customers with reliable products designed to meet their needs in the areas of grid transmission, electricity supply and district heating supply, and promotes renewable energies and energy efficiency.

Its grid territory, combined with AVAG (Aare Versorgungs AG), comprises 77 municipalities in the two cantons of Basel-Landschaft and Solothurn, and in Alsace, France. Its 170,000 customers receive a reliable, round-the-clock supply of electricity. As a leading supplier of local and district heating, EBM operates 214 heating networks and plants in Switzerland and Alsace.

Its holding in aventron AG provides it with an interest in 125 renewable energy power plants with an installed power capacity of some 430 megawatts. In line with its vision, it is striving to develop continuously as a modern, customer-focused and cost-efficient utility company. The company, with 436 employees and 13 apprentices, can say it knows energy inside out.

www.ebm.ch

EKZ at a glance

Simple, reliable and forward-looking.

EKZ is helping customers transition to a new energy paradigm by exclusively offering renewably-sourced electricity and one of the lowest tariffs available in Switzerland. It supplies electricity to almost 1 million people, making it one of the largest providers in Switzerland. Its power grid spans some 15,000 kilometres and has an above-average availability score of 99.997%.

Its 1,400 employees are committed to providing flexible energy solutions to homeowners and tenants, businesses and other energy suppliers in Switzerland. They are instrumental in shaping the energy industry of tomorrow - evidenced, for example, by Switzerland's largest battery-based storage facility in Volketswil, which supplies control energy. Other solutions include a street lighting system, in Urdorf, that adapts to the volume of traffic and which won the 2018 Watt d'Or award in the Energy Technology category.www.ekz.ch