Alinta Energy taps MA Moelis to shop billing platform

afr.com:

Two months after Alinta Energy hived off its Pilbara power generation assets to APA Group for $1.7 billion, its executives have dug up another carve-out candidate – this time from their back office.

Alinta Energy boss Jeff Dimery has been busy on the M&A circuit.  

Street Talk can reveal that the Asian-owned energy retailer has mandated MA Moelis to shop Alinta Core, its proprietary billing and customer management software platform, which already services circa 700,000 accounts.

Alinta is understood to have fielded inbound interest, before kicking off a wider search. Early investor marketing is under way, with potential buyers being told to brace for a sale process down the line.

Flyers have just gone out to energy retailers and financial investors, and potential suitors are being pointed to UK-headquartered Octopus Energy’s operating system Kraken to make a case for Alinta Core’s future potential.

Kraken has migrated more than 30 big energy companies’ accounts to its platform, and now services 30 million customers across 16 countries – and Alinta and its advisers reckon there’s no reason why Alinta Core shouldn’t be able to do the same under right ownership.

Prospective bidders are being told Alinta built its up-for-sale platform from the ground up to improve operational efficiency, lower costs and – this is a big one – to avoid expensive regulatory fines from billing and servicing errors. Developed over the past five to six years, it is a “purpose-built” modern alternative to older and clunkier applications based on SAP or Oracle.

The cloud-native platform serves up a single view of each customer, all the way from onboarding and account creation to collections, service variation and assurance. The flyer said the