AER invites submissions on its draft Position Paper on profitability measures for network businesses

The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has today released its draft position paper on Profitability measures for electricity and gas network businesses. This paper responds to matters raised by stakeholders in relation to last November's discussion paper on this issue and provides the AER's views on the profitability measures we propose to report.

The AER's ongoing work in relation to profitability has been in response to general community concerns about regulated network businesses profit levels. In this context, it is important to develop measures that will allow us to report and properly compare returns of the service providers we regulate.

Our primary purpose is to provide information that will assist stakeholders when engaging with network businesses and making submissions to AER revenue determinations and other regulatory reviews. We will also have regard to profitability outcomes as part of our determination processes and the measures may be used to help monitor the overall effectiveness of the regulatory regime.   

We had intended to publish our draft position paper in February, however, we have undertaken further analysis and consultation to better understand the profitability data currently available.

Please note: parallel to its review of profitability measures, the AER is also undertaking a review of our rate of return guideline with our draft decision to be released in late June.

Invitation for submissions

We invite submissions on the draft position paper by close of business 30 May 2018. We prefer stakeholders to send submissions electronically to: AERinquiryaer [dot] gov [dot] au (AERinquiry[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au)

Alternatively, stakeholders can mail submissions to:

Mr Warwick Anderson
General Manager, Network Finance and Reporting
Australian Energy Regulator
GPO Box 3131
Canberra ACT 2601

We prefer all submissions be publicly available to facilitate an informed, transparent and robust consultation process. Accordingly, submissions will be treated as public documents unless prior arrangements are made with the AER to treat the submission, or portions of it, as confidential. We request parties wishing to submit confidential information to:

• clearly identify the information that is the subject of the confidentiality claim; and
• provide a non-confidential version of the submission.

We will place all non-confidential submissions on our website. For further information on our use and disclosure of information provided to us, see the ACCC/AER Information Policy.

Please direct enquiries about this paper to AERinquiryaer [dot] gov [dot] au (AERinquiry[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au).