Spark Energy Affiliate To Acquire Retail Energy Companies With Over 500,000 Customers

National Gas & Electric, LLC announced that it has entered into agreements for the purchase of retail energy companies with over 500,000 of combined residential customer equivalents (RCEs).

The companies to be acquired were not disclosed

Contingent upon closing, along with the previously announced acquisition of a Northeast retail customer base from an undisclosed seller operating in over twenty gas and power markets, National Gas & Electric, "could house over 600,000 RCEs that are within a similar geographic footprint to its affiliate, Spark Energy, Inc," the company said

National Gas & Electric, LLC is wholly owned by W. Keith Maxwell III, who is also the Founder and Chairman of Spark Energy. NG&E is working alongside Spark to develop a strategy that maximizes Spark’s ability to aggressively pursue additional growth through M&A while also serving as a retail holding company for the de-risking of acquired books of customers.

"It is truly an exciting and dynamic time in the retail energy space," said W. Keith Maxwell III, NG&E’s CEO. "With these potential acquisitions at NG&E, we are creating a customer book of significant scale that provides a long-term source of potential dropdowns to Spark."

NG&E intends to fund these acquisitions with a combination of the sale of a portion of Spark Common Stock held by NG&E’s parent and the leveraging of the parent’s balance sheet. NG&E’s parent, which currently owns over 10.0 million shares of Spark stock, intends to begin sales in the first quarter of 2016. NG&E hopes to close on these potential acquisitions in the first half 2016.

Spark Energy, Inc., an affiliated company, successfully closed on its first dropdown acquisition of Oasis Power, from the parent-level on July 31, 2015. While NG&E intends to offer these customers to Spark, there is no assurance that such a transaction will be completed as it remains subject to negotiation of definitive agreements and necessary board approvals.