Vistra CEO Sees New Brands Tesla, Shell, bp Entering Retail Energy Markets As Helping Drive Market Design Changes Needed To Unlock Retail Supplier Innovation (Supplier Consolidated Billing, SOS)

During a Q&A as part of Vistra's third quarter earnings call, Jim Burke, president and CEO of Vistra, said that he thinks new brands such as Tesla, Shell, and bp entering the retail energy markets can help efforts to change market designs to allow retail suppliers to offer innovative products to customers

Burke was discussing a decline in Vistra's residential customer count in non-Texas markets (see today's related story here), and noted that Texas provides retail suppliers the ability to offer innovative products and services (with suppliers being flexible to customers' needs and desires), because retail suppliers are the sole billing entity in the market, and there is no default service. This market design allows differentiation, Burke noted

Burke contrasted this with other retail markets where suppliers cannot perform single billing (supplier consolidated billing), and where suppliers are still competing against default service. Such a market design reduces the retail supplier to a line item on a bill, and creates boom-bust cycles based on lagging SOS pricing, Burke said

"We have to work to change the mindset of some of these marketplaces to be able to open them up to differentiation," Burke said

"I do think other brands entering the space, like Tesla, Shell, bp, can help bring other voices to the table," Burke said

"I think a lot of this is the follow-on to the polar vortex in 2014, where there was a lot of concern about how retailers needed to try to recover their costs, and prices were moving very, very quickly. And we've got to restore confidence in some of these other markets outside of Texas to be able to differentiate like we do [in Texas]," Burke said