Shares in Good Energy, the Chippenham-based renewable electricity supplier and generator, fell by more than 6% yesterday after it warned that its profits will be lower than expected this year.
The fall came despite the firm announcing that it had secured a new £45m debt facility to invest in future generating capacity and customer growth.
Good Energy has gone from strength to strength in recent year, generating a 136% increase in pre-tax profits to £3.3m in the year to last December on revenues up 43% at £40.4m. 
But yesterday it blamed the warmest year on record and lower wind speeds for buffeting its profits.
As a result it expects pre-tax profits for the year to December 31 to come in at around £2.2m before a £1m one-off cost linked to the refinancing of the existing debt facility for one of its wind farms.
The firm’s shares, listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market, took a tumbling and closed down 13.5p – or 6.11% – on the day at 207.5p. They remained unchanged in early trading today.
The new debt financing facility has been secured with London listed infrastructure debt fund GCP Infrastructure Investments.
Good Energy chief executive Juliet Davenport said: “During the year, we have made good progress towards our strategic objectives of delivering continued customer growth, increasing our generation capacity and providing funding sources for our generation assets.
“The new £45m facility, provided by GCP infrastructure Investments Limited through its commitment to the renewable sector, underpins our objective of generating more than half of our electricity from our own renewable assets by 2016. It also provides us with long-term committed finance, which will enable increased investment in both existing, and new projects consistent with our growth strategy.
“While recent customer demand for energy has been affected by the milder weather this year directly impacting on our revenues for 2014, I am very encouraged by the increasing numbers of customers choosing Good Energy.”
The new debt facility will enable Good Energy to build a further 18MW of solar sites to add to the 24MW of renewables assets it already owns and operates. It will also help it build its solar generation portfolio, bringing the total capacity of wind and solar to 42MW and significantly aiding its objective of generating half its customers’ electricity needs from its own renewable assets by 2016.
The facility will also be used to refinance its existing debt facility on the Hampole wind farm near Doncaster and its two existing operational solar sites.
Good Energy said at November 30, its electricity customer numbers were up 37% to around 50,500 and gas customer numbers were up 85% to around 24,000.
