"It's just a shell game," Gary Levitan, Senior Manager for Energy & Utilities for Hudson's Bay Company, said of retail pricing and procurement during DNV GL's Retail Energy Executive Forum

"I don't mean to offend anybody, but it's all a shell game to me. There's no winning it," Levitan said, addressing a question of the tradeoffs of low pricing versus risk management.

"It's just like buying stocks, that's how I view it," Levitan said. "If you're looking to beat the market, then you have to treat it as any other kind of investment."

"I'm the only one taking a risk," Levitan lamented of certain retail energy buying strategies, such as those presented to customers last fall, where excessive risk premiums made long-term pricing unattractive even as prices were expected to moderate after the winter, and short-term pricing was presented as an alternative to hold-off a longer-term purchasing decision until the spring.

Tags:
Deregulation   Pricing  

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