Ista International

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ista

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1957
Seat Essen , Germany
management Thomas Zinnöcker, Ulrich Fischer, Thomas Lemper, Hagen Lessing, Laurent Sireix
Number of employees 5,800
sales 909 million euros
Branch Energy service provider
Website www.ista.com
As of January 8, 2020

The ista International GmbH (proper spelling ista ) is a world-represented energy service provider based in Essen .

Data and key figures

Just over 5,800 employees record and calculate the individual energy consumption of around 13 million units (apartments and businesses) worldwide.

ista companies are active in 22 countries. The focus is on Europe. ista sees good growth prospects abroad. In Germany, on the other hand, the company can barely make acquisitions for anti-trust reasons.

The Essen-based company has already received several awards from the Dutch Top Employers Institute . This year, in addition to the German locations, the branches in France , Poland , Romania and Switzerland were also honored.

Submetering

The business model consists of so-called sub-metering. This includes the individual recording and billing of consumption data for apartment buildings and commercial properties. While energy supply companies bill the total consumption of the individual buildings as costs, energy service providers like ista use measurement technology to record how these costs are distributed within the building. The European Commission estimates the energy saving potential in the building sector through sub-metering at 15 to even 30 percent and therefore, within the framework of the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), requested the European member states to create a corresponding legal basis, similar to the regulations that exist in Germany.

In January 2019, ista published a study together with Deutsche Telekom on NB-IoT- enabled devices. For this purpose, Deutsche Telekom made its NB-IoT network and ista available its remotely readable devices. It turned out that NB-IoT-capable devices work without errors in 99.75% of the cases and enable fast data transmission.

Products and services

ista installs and operates measuring and recording devices such as heat cost allocators , water and heat meters, system technology and the corresponding accessories. In 2013, the share of radio-based devices was around 35% across the industry. By 2017, two thirds of all properties should be equipped with radio technology.

Ista has also offered a smoke alarm device since 2007 . In addition, ista offers energy certificates in Germany, which provide information about the energy efficiency of a building. With new offers such as consumption analysis and web-based energy data management / energy management , ista is entering professional energy data management. These solutions are intended to support property managers and tenants in identifying potential cost reductions and opportunities to increase efficiency in private and commercial properties. ista claims to make a direct contribution to environmental protection through its services.

history

ista was founded in Mannheim in 1957 by Johannes Schultz and Karl Völker . In 1990 the company was taken over by Raab Karcher . In 1994 it was merged with Clorius under the name Raab Karcher Energieservice . In 1997 Raab Karcher Energy expanded into the USA and the People's Republic of China . In 1998 it was represented in almost every country in Europe.

In 1999 Raab Karcher merged with VEBA Immobilien to form Viterra AG . Raab Karcher continues to work in the new company under the name Viterra Energy Services . In 2000, Viterra Energy Services entered the Spanish and Brazilian metering business with the acquisition of the Spanish company Incatema . In the same year it became the market leader in the Czech Republic .

From 1999, Viterra Energy Services belonged to the E.ON energy group . In April 2003 the British financial investor CVC Capital Partners took over the company for 930 million euros. On January 1, 2003, the company took on the name ista Deutschland GmbH . In the summer of 2007, the British financial investor Charterhouse Development Capital took over the majority in the ista group and six years later, on April 19, 2013, it sold its stake back to CVC Capital Partners for 3.1 billion euros.

ista has grown internationally through several acquisitions, including Incatema (acquired in 2000), Utiliread (acquired in 2001), Comptage Immobilier Services (acquired in 2006) and Azureenne de Comptage (acquired in 2013). This made the company the market leader in Europe and worldwide by a clear margin.

In July 2017, the financial investor CVC Capital Partners announced that it would sell ista. A consortium around Cheung Kong Property Holdings Limited (CKP) and CK Infrastructure Holdings Limited (CKI) became the new owner for a total of 4.5 billion euros . The two companies are owned by the Hong Kong-based family of billionaire Li Ka-shing .

Antitrust aspects of the submetering business

In May 2017, the Federal Cartel Office published a "sector investigation into reading services for heating and water costs" with the result that there are considerable indications in the market for reading services for heating and water costs that there is an uncompetitive oligopoly , which at least the two market leaders Techem and Ista International , but possibly also Minol Messtechnik W. Lehmann , Kalorimeta and Brunata-Metrona belong. A few large companies dominate the market for meter reading services for heating and water costs (the two largest providers Techem and Ista together have a 50% market share, the five largest providers together have 70%).

According to the Federal Cartel Office, the existing market structure and competition lead to "restrictions on actual and potential competition. The possibility of the opposite side of the market to switch to other companies is [...] limited." In total, the Federal Cartel Office found "relatively high" returns for the submetering companies, which result from an average turnover per residential unit and year of around EUR 74 (with clear differences between the various providers).

Criticisms of the Federal Cartel Office

The Federal Cartel Office expressed the main points of criticism both at structural features and at certain behaviors of the submetering providers who aim to "make it more difficult for customers to switch providers and are therefore suitable for limiting competition between submetering providers".

  1. Long contract terms , including different calibration periods for different types of meters.
  2. The cost of reading is usually borne by the tenant, the choice and commissioning of the reading service is made by the landlord ("triangular contract"). As a result, the client's price sensitivity is only weak.
  3. The costs of the reading are sometimes difficult or impossible to understand for the user, as they are only shown in aggregated form in the ancillary cost statements.
  4. A change of provider is made difficult by the lack of interoperability of meter systems. Due to legislative interventions, however, there is a trend towards more interoperable systems that could make it easier to switch providers in the future.
  5. A poor comparability of prices and the quality of the services offered makes it difficult to select alternative service providers.
  6. Tacit coordination : In particular, the leading companies Techem and ista have it comparatively easy, due to their position in the market, to reach agreement on the terms of tacit coordination. Among other things, the high degree of concentration, the high stability of demand and the divergence between direct demand and payment flows (triangular contractual relationship) allow uncontrollable room for maneuver, since central competitive parameters such as price setting and changing providers cannot develop their disciplinary effect on the submetering markets to a sufficient extent.
  7. Refusals to deliver accessories and spare parts : In the investigation by the Federal Cartel Office, 46 market participants surveyed stated that in certain cases they had difficulties when a submetering customer wanted to switch from their current provider. These difficulties often consisted of the availability of spare parts for taken over meters.
  8. Use of proprietary software and access to interfaces : Submetering providers usually do not grant their competitors access to the interface of their meters.

Recommendations of the Federal Cartel Office

The Bundeskartellamt recommends the following "measures to stimulate competition in reading services":

  1. promoting the interoperability of meters (approaches for this are already laid out in the MsbG ).
  2. a standardization of the calibration periods and usage periods of the meters so that a submetering customer can switch to another provider as easily as possible after a certain contract period.
  3. Softening the "triangular contractual relationship" (submetering company, submetering customer, user) in order to impose the costs of submetering on the party hiring the submetering company. In addition, improved transparency for tenants through information rights and tendering obligations.

Studies

In 2017 ista International GmbH carried out a study with DENA on the monthly consumption information for tenants. The result was that tenants who were informed about their heating behavior on a monthly basis consumed over 10% less energy at the end of the year than those who were not informed.

Together with DIW , ista publishes the heat monitor annually, in which the heating cost bills of over 300,000 apartment buildings are evaluated in a weather and climate-adjusted manner.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ista management
  2. ↑ ueber-uns , accessed on August 18, 2020.
  3. ↑ Bundesanzeiger.de : Consolidated Financial Statements as of December 31, 2018
  4. ↑ https://www.top-employers.com/de-DE/companyprofiles/de/ista-deutschland-gmbh/
  5. ↑ ista: Submetering: Intelligent recording systems. ista.com, accessed on March 24, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Directive 2012/27 / EU (PDF)
  7. ↑ https://www.pressebox.de/inaktiv/ista-deutschland-gmbh/NarrowBand-IoT-ueberzeugt-bei-Praxistest-im-Gebaeude/boxid/937459
  8. ↑ JUVE: Surprise: CVC takes over the helm at ista again with Hengeler
  9. ↑ Florian Langenscheidt , Bernd Venohr (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German world market leaders. The premier class of German companies in words and pictures . German Standards Editions, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-86936-221-2 .
  10. ↑ FAZ.net September 22, 2017: Ista becomes the most expensive private equity deal in Germany
  11. ↑ Measurement group Ista sold to China . Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 28, 2017, accessed on August 7, 2020 .
  12. ↑ a b c d Press release: Sector inquiry into meter reading services for heating and water costs. (PDF) Bundeskartellamt, May 4, 2017, accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  13. ↑ a b c d Sector Inquiry into Submetering - Presentation and analysis of the competitive situation in meter reading services for heating and water costs. (PDF) Bundeskartellamt, May 4, 2017, accessed on February 23, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Stefan Buchen: Kartell: How reading services enrich tenants. Norddeutscher Rundfunk - public law institution, July 10, 2019, accessed on February 23, 2020 .
  15. ↑ https://www.dena.de/themen-projekte/projekte/gebaeude/modellvorhaben-bewusst-heizen-kosten-sparen/
  16. ↑ https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.599126.de/themen_nachrichten/waermemonitor_2017_haushalte_profitieren_von_weiter_sinkenden_heizkosten_stagnender_bedarf_fuehrt_zu_stillstand_beim_klimaschutz.html