AGL is anticipating technology costs to contribute to higher operating expenses for the first six months of this year.
Despite booking a post-tax loss of more than $1 billion for the first half of the 2023 financial year, this won’t stand in the way of the energy giant’s technology plans.
CEO Damien Nicks didn’t reveal how much extra the company planned to spend on technology.
It’s total operating expenses (OpEx) for the first half of the financial year came in at $195 million.
Nicks said AGL’s investment in mobile technology is bearing fruit.
“We continue to have the highest brand awareness in energy and now have over 50 percent of customers interacting solely through digital channels,” he said.
AGL anticipates that it will continue “unlocking growth through technology, digitisation and AI”, which will enhance the customer experience and will improve its “trading, operational and risk management capabilities.
“Our focus on both leading and emerging technology will underpin the future energy relationship with customers, unlocking the value of electrification and decentralised energy,” he said.
The rollout of distributed energy resources (DER) will be a driver of technology investment, with the company expecting a fivefold-to-tenfold growth in “DER nameplate” by 2030.
Nameplate capacity is a measure of how much energy can be generated under certain conditions.
Nicks said AGL will “build capability to remotely manage distributed energy resources
in a flexible and digital-led way, and apply AI and algorithms to manage flexible portfolio”.
There’s also an ongoing retail transformation project, which Nicks said not only simplifies AGL’s core, but [also] extends to new energy technology, “which will enhance capability to remotely manage distributed energy resources in a flexible and digital-led way.”
That technology investment will also allow AGL to “scale our energy solutions businesses to drive distributed energy under orchestration.”
Elsewhere, AGL’s telecommunications services grew by 25,000 customers in the first half of FY23.
CFO Gary Brown also noted a “small but prudent” $5 million uplift in cyber security spend in the first half of 2023.
Brown also said there was a marginal increase in capital expenditure forecast for the full 2023 financial year, driven by a step up in the “retail next transformation program”, as well as customer data regulatory programs.
AGL reported an $87 million underlying net profit after tax, down 55 percent on the first half of 2022.