He disappointed a million customers. But the owner of Bohemia Energy Jiří Písařík does not end there

This is the biggest downfall of an energy company in post-November history. The company claims that it has enough cash to repay any overpayments to its customers and meet all obligations. The abrasion of great disappointment and nervousness for many customers, however, remains.

Jiří Písařík’s business story is simple – a graduate economist with experience in two international companies in the autumn of 2005 seized the opportunity presented by the market. In the Czech Republic, the electricity market was fully liberalized and two years later the gas market.

It was Písařík and his wife Hana who were one of the first alternative suppliers to start competing fully with big players in 2006. First supplies for small businesses, then for households. But it is from these wooden times that a great “shadow” also comes: door-to-door sales. From today’s point of view, the sellers acted on the verge of smuggling behavior.

Bohemia Energy has always officially condemned this, citing the fact that the sellers were often outsourced and not employees. However, it must be added that the company did not close the doorstep sales until 2020. In recent years, this was no longer necessary, the company invested heavily in advertising (TV spots with Pavel Liška) and customers went alone.

After all, Bohemia Energy had a clear strategy from the beginning to the last days: to be cheaper than others. And that is something that Czechs hear about. But in order for energy to be cheap, Písařík had to choose a risky strategy: to buy electricity and gas on the stock exchanges, especially if it was cheap and at the same time not to hold unnecessarily large reserves.

Increasing price turbulence

It has not been such a problem for a long time, but in the last five years price turbulence has been growing, due to fluctuations in gas, oil, renewables, the effects of the pandemic and, most recently, speculators who bought emission allowances.

In the end, the mix of these factors did not stop Písařík. He also had to supply energy to customers who fixed older “cheap” prices, but bought at the current high prices. Combined with insufficient supplies, there was a shortage of cash, and in a minute or twelve the businessman preferred to close it himself. At the same time, in 2020 it earned 23 billion crowns and the profit (before depreciation) was almost a billion crowns. “We are very sorry about the situation of our customers and we apologize to everyone for the problems we have caused them,” Písařík said.

Is this the definitive end of his business? It seems not. Bohemia Energy (BE) was in fact a group of companies and one of them still exists and has a valid license – Amper Market. It focuses on the sale of energy to larger corporate customers, and as Hospodářské noviny and iDnes recently pointed out, Písařík transferred some of the smaller companies from the BE group to this functioning company. Specifically, it is Energie ČS and Europe Easy Energy.

According to experts, some “storage” reserves of gas and electricity have remained in the BE group, it is possible to monetize them and repay debts with a yield, or to continue investing. It is also possible that Písařík will continue to do business and offer services to corporate customers. But only time will tell. Jiří Písařík – according to the ranking of Forbes magazine, the 32nd richest Czech with assets of seven billion crowns (before the fall of BE) – did not say the last word anyway.

I am also a BE client, sorry Liška
Actor Pavel Liška has become the main face of Bohemia Energy (BE) in the last three years thanks to television advertising. He performed in the spots together with the actor Mark Daniel. Over the weekend, Liška commented on social networks for the first time on the whole case. According to him, it was a shock for him: on the one hand, he did not believe that such a large and serious company could fall so quickly and easily, but at the same time he realized that for many customers he is synonymous with the BE brand.

“It simply came to our notice then. I myself belong to the million BE customers who trusted them and used their services. But I also add that I acted in those spots… I’m very sorry and I apologize to everyone who feels hard, “the actor wrote.

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