Mytilineos buys electricity provider Watt+Volt for €36 mln

Energy group Mytilineos announced the acquisition of electricity provider Watt+Volt for 36 million euros. According to its announcement, Mytilineos will pay €20 million in cash and €16 million in Mytilineos shares, at €17 per share. 

Adding Watt+Volt’s 200,000 customers and 2.13% share in the electricity market, gives Mytilineos 550,000 customers and a nearly 10% share, consolidating its place as Greece’s second-largest provider behind state-controlled Public Power Corporation. The combined company will also have nearly 100 shops and 516 electric vehicle charging points. 

Mytilineos says that the quality of Watt+Volt’s management and its innovative ideas and practices was decisive in its acquisition of the smaller company, the first one in the retail electricity market in the middle of an energy crisis. Mytilineos CEO Evangelos Mytilineos said the merger will help offer better and more competitive services. “Our company aims at creating the utility of the future,” he said. 

For Watt+Volt CEO Tassos Papanagiotou, the acquisition was the culmination of an 11-year-old effort and will create by far the largest private provider of retail electricity and natural gas in Greece. 

Market analysts were not surprised by the deal, saying that they concluded a year ago that the smaller providers cannot survive in crisis conditions and juggle the demands for increased liquidity and the difficulty in collecting on their electricity bills. 

Mergers and acquisitions are a sustainable way out and other smaller providers are actually looking forward to them, the analysts said.