Origin steals record loot from everyone

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Via ORG today:

So, ORG sent record volumes of Aussie gas offshore without paying any tax on it, in the process creating an artificial gas shortage at home which it exploited via higher electricity prices (remembering that gas sets the marginal price of electricity) for its portfolio of coal, gas and renewable power stations.

That this Enron-style vertical business model prints money should be a surprise to no man. It has, in fact, so bedazzled RBC that it can’t see it ending:

RBC’s Ben Wilson has reiterated his Outperform rating and $10.00 target price on Origin Energy after the company posted its third quarter update this morning.

“We do think the worst is behind Origin in terms of regulatory intervention as proposed forced divestiture legislation is in our view unlikely and the outcomes of a review into default market offers were consistent with Origin’s guidance presented last year,” Mr Wilson says.

“The combination of self-imposed tariff reductions and the impact of default market offers we feel has reduced the regulatory scrutiny on the sector for now.”

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Is this bloke joking or what? I don’t know if Labor will take ORG to the woodshed with tougher gas reservation but I can most assuredly observe that if it does not then it will virtually be committing economic treason.

Thus to say that “the worst is behind Origin in terms of regulatory intervention” is perhaps the dumbest thing I have read this week.

And there has so far been some very serious competition.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.