PhillyDeals: At Energy Plus, 'a growth story, not a contraction'

Energy Plus Holdings L.L.C.

, the University City-based energy retailer founded four years ago by Center City ex-credit-card-marketeer

Richard W. Vague

, has accepted a $190 million cash offer from

NRG Energy Inc.

, of Princeton.

Energy Plus employs more than 150, including Penn and Drexel student telemarketers, at its headquarters on the top floor of the University City Science Center's new 3711 Market St. office building.

NRG chief executive David Crane said Vague and chief operating officer Kevin Kleinschmidt were the rare energy executives who could turn the "boring" business of power sales into "a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity." Klein- schmidt will run Energy Plus as a unit of NRG. Vague will stay on as a consultant, and the company will keep hiring in Philadelphia.

"This is a growth story, not a contraction story," Crane told me.

NRG owns electric plants across the South and West; it's about half the size of Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. power company.

Energy Plus produces no gas or electricity. Like other energy marketers that have sprouted up amid energy-rate deregulation, it buys energy from others and then peddles itself to consumers and small businesses as an alternative to local utilities, such as Exelon's Peco Energy Co., by offering airline frequent-flier models and other discounts.

Energy Plus claims about 160,000 customers, up from 30,000 in early 2009. Crane told me he first met Vague and Kleinschmidt through Howard Cosgrove, the former Delmarva Power & Light Co. boss in the 1990s. Cosgrove now chairs NRG's board.

Crane said NRG had previously acquired two other energy retailers, Reliant and Green Mountain, but had mostly stayed out of the Northeast until the recent fall in natural gas prices made it easier to make a profit from consumers here.

Google Inc. boss Larry Page

says his company is buying

Motorola Mobility

mostly to gain patents that would help defend its

Android

smartphones from rival

Apple

and its

iPhones

.

But some telecom-watchers say Google has a deeper strategy in play - and that Motorola's Horsham plant, which currently makes set-top cable TV boxes and cable-to-wireless video equipment for Comcast and other pay-TV companies, is at the heart of the deal.

Though Wall Street is obsessed with the deal's impact on Google Android phones, Motorola's video products "are much more interesting," proving, with other deals, Google's "growing interest" in video, analyst Tony Wible wrote in a report to clients of Phila- delphia-based Janney Capital Markets.

Video content and delivery technology is becoming more valuable than mere TV distribution. But before video moves decisively to wireless devices, someone needs to develop "a one-box [Internet protocol] TV platform." That someone will likely be Google, once it buys Motorola Mobility, Wible wrote.

"Google seeks control, especially a communications pathway over the [TV] set top, or any other hardware communications pathways to Internet-based advertising," says Kevin Ryan, chief executive of online ad consultant Motivity Marketing.

By improving wireless video systems, Google can bypass the confused "bloatware, restrictive formats, and failed devices" that keep consumers welded to today's TVs, Ryan told me. With Motorola's video tech, Google "will open more long-term revenue channels," Ryan said.

But first, Google has to get the deal past federal officials in the face of aggressive opposition by Apple, Microsoft, and the TV industry. "Google will have to deal with this antitrust thing," Ryan told me. "The lobbying that's happening in D.C. now makes [convicted influence peddler] Jack Abramoff look like Mahatma Gandhi."

Joon Associates Inc.

and its president,

Joanna Pang

, on Tuesday asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Philadelphia for permission to reorganize the

Trocadero Theatre

, an old burlesque house on Arch Street where Pang has hosted rock concerts since the 1990s, "to obtain a breathing spell from creditors while it negotiates a restructuring of its debts."

In her filing, Pang notes the high cost of cutting Ticketmaster up to 30 percent of the proceeds for every ticket, along with declining ticket sales (revenue slipped from $2.3 million in 2008 to $2.1 million in 2009), and unrelated litigation costs, for a cash-flow squeeze that has started to delay workers' paychecks. Bankruptcy could let the Troc break contracts with Ticketmaster and others. A Ticketmaster spokeswoman declined to comment.