Dive Brief:
- Exelon Corp plans to buy Integrys Energy Services, the retail electricity arm of Integrys Energy Group, for $60 million-plus, with the deal adding $2 billion in annual sales to Exelon retail energy subsidiary Constellation Energy when it closes in Q4 2014 or Q1 2015.
- The acquisition adds Integrys Energy Services’ 720,000 Chicago retail electricity customers to Constellation’s 100,000-plus business and public-sector customers, including more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100, as well as some 1 million residential customers.
- Because Exelon is the parent company of Commonwealth Edison, the investor-owned utility that some Chicagoans switched to Integrys to get away from last year, Exelon added to the deal announcement an assurance that it will honor the terms of the Integrys deal with the City of Chicago to provide electricity at $0.0529 per kilowatt-hour, plus a flat fee, until the contract expires in May 2015.
Dive Insight:
Integrys Energy Group, which fell short of projected earnings in four of the last eight quarters, just sold its public electricity and natural gas utilities to Wisconsin Energy Corp. for $9.1 billion in cash, stock, and debt.
Constellation Retail, which will take over from Integrys Energy Services, has pledged to prevent service disruptions and honor all contracts.
Chicago electricity customers, who now have a week to decide whether to stay with Integrys or return to ComEd, may be confused by a new Integrys rate structure that charges customers in multifamily units between $3.99 per month to $22.36 per month and charges those in single-family homes $19.99 to $29.99 per month, depending on usage levels.
