


|


Because we manage our portfolio on an integrated basis, the three disciplines — production, trading, and retail — work closely together.

We also inherited a 100-year-old commitment to serving customers, which translates into high customer loyalty, satisfaction, and brand awareness. To bolster traditional customer service strengths, the retail organization has aggressively recruited expertise from 30 of the worlds brand leaders and made major investments to provide superior customer care, offer innovative energy solutions, and develop relationships built on trust.
TXU Energy entered the competitive era successfully. During the retail pilot project in 2001, we surpassed our goals for retaining customers. In markets outside our traditional area, we surpassed our goals in signing new customers.
We delivered impressive results in negotiating contracts with large commercial and industrial customers, closing three times as many C&I deals as our competitors did. C&I gross margin was stronger than anticipated and customers signed for longer terms than expected.
Although the competitive market has been open just a short time, TXU Energy continues to keep and win customers ahead of plan. Our retail strategy is to remain one of the nations largest competitive energy retailers by providing high value at competitive prices, with a focus on selected customer bases and profitability. Our production portfolio provides a natural hedge, or balance, for fixed-price customer obligations. We have one of the largest generation fleets and mining operations in the US, with an exceptional record of environmental achievement for clean air and water.
A key competitive advantage is our ability to produce electricity at low variable costs. Nuclear and coal plants provide low-cost, reliable energy to serve customers and a stable base of cash flows, while flexible gas plants provide options for meeting customers needs when demand and prices for energy are higher. Supplementing our own generation are contracts that include 382 megawatts of wind-power capacity, making TXU Energy one of the largest purchasers of wind generation in North America. Our production diversity limits exposure to any one fuel source.
Portfolio management constantly adjusts the portfolio to fit market conditions. To that end, we agreed to sell 2,334 megawatts of North Texas generation plant in late 2001. This divestiture will better position the portfolio, reduce debt, and position TXU for further growth in other North American markets. We also auctioned energy options on 3,175 megawatts, or 15 percent of our electric capacity in Texas, further reducing our concentration in the generation market.
Our merchant energy trading operation maximizes the overall portfolio by managing the obligations of our customer commitments through trading coal, fuel oil, air emissions, natural gas, electricity, and weather products. By seamlessly linking the capabilities of the portfolio through the use of end-to-end systems, energy trading is able to optimize cash flows and earnings across the portfolio.
|
|