Texas Genco was a power generation company that came about as part of the deregulated Texas electricity market and owned numerous power plants in the Houston area that serve area power needs. The Company was created in 2001 as part of the Texas electricity market deregulation. Incumbent utilities were required to separate their business functions into a retail electric provider (REP), a transmission and distribution service provider (TDSP), and a wholesale generator. [1]
Electricity deregulation in Texas, approved by Texas Senate Bill 7 on January 1, 2002, calls for the creation of the Electric Utility Restructuring Legislative Oversight Committee to oversee implementation of the bill. According to the law, deregulation would be phased in over several years.
Houston is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas, fourth most populous city in the United States, as well as the sixth most populous in North America, with an estimated 2018 population of 2,325,502. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second most populous in Texas after the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, with a population of 6,997,384 in 2018.
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In 2000, Reliant Energy announced that it was splitting its business into separate regulated and unregulated businesses. [2] This split formed Reliant Resources, an unregulated electricity and energy company, and Centerpoint Energy, the remaining mostly regulated energy delivery company. [3] Reliant Energy's power plants became a wholly owned subsidiary of Centerpoint Energy. The new company was known as Texas Genco.
When the state of Texas deregulated the electricity market, the former Houston Lighting & Power (HL&P) was split into several companies. [4] In 2003 HL&P was split into Reliant Energy, Texas Genco, and CenterPoint Energy. [5]
Houston Lighting & Power Co. (HL&P), later named Reliant Energy HL&P/Entex, was the single power and utility company that served Greater Houston of the U.S. state of Texas. It was a subsidiary of Houston Industries, which later was renamed to Reliant Energy (REI). HL&P had a service area of 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2). In 1998 in terms of kilowatt-hour sales it was the tenth-largest energy company in the United States.
Reliant Energy is an American energy company based in Houston, Texas.
CenterPoint Energy is a Fortune 500 electric and natural gas utility serving several markets in the U.S. states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. It was formerly known as Reliant Energy, NorAm Energy, Houston Industries, and HL&P. The company is headquartered in the CenterPoint Energy Tower at 1111 Louisiana Street in Downtown Houston. Some of its notable subscribers include Retail Electric Providers (REPs), such as NRG Energy, Champion Energy, Eligo Energy, Dynowatt, Ambit Energy, Texas Power, Bounce Energy, MXenergy, Direct Energy, Stream Energy, First Texas Energy Corporation, Gexa Energy, Cirro Energy, and Kona Energy.
Seeking opportunities arising out of the deregulation of the electricity industry in Texas, in late 2004 four private equity firms—the Texas Pacific Group, the Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and Hellman & Friedman of San Francisco—combined forces to purchase Texas Genco from the transmission & distribution provider utility Centerpoint Energy for Houston.
KKR & Co. Inc. is an American global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strategic partners, hedge funds. The firm has completed more than 280 private equity investments in portfolio companies with approximately $545 billion of total enterprise value as of June 30, 2017. As of September 30, 2017, Assets Under Management (“AUM”) and Fee Paying Assets Under Management (“FPAUM”) were $153 billion and $114 billion, respectively.
Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) is an American private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts as well as growth capital investments. H&F has focused its efforts on several core target industries including media, financial services, professional services and information services. The firm tends to avoid asset intensive or other industrial businesses. H&F is based in San Francisco, with offices in New York and London.
This coalition of firms acquired Texas Genco—which was the second largest operator of power generation facilities in the state—for a price of approximately $1.9 billion and using just $900 million in cash.
In late 2005, these private equity firms announced the sale of Texas Genco to NRG Energy of Princeton, N.J., for a price of roughly $5.9 billion. The investors achieved a gain of almost $5 billion over the space of an investment holding period of less than 18 months, a return that will mark one of the most lucrative private equity investments in recent years.
NRG Energy, Inc. is a large American energy company, dual-headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey and Houston, Texas. It was formerly the wholesale arm of Northern States Power Company (NSP), which became Xcel Energy, but became independent in 2000. NRG Energy is involved in energy generation and retail electricity. Their portfolio includes nuclear generation, coal generation, wind generation, utility scale generation, distributed solar generation, and oil generation. NRG serves 2.9 million retail customers in Texas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the District of Columbia.
Private equity typically refers to investment funds, generally organized as limited partnerships, that buy and restructure companies that are not publicly traded.
