The Danish energy company Ørsted (formerly known as DONG Energy) has started a sale process for its Danish power distribution and residential customer businesses in order to focus on its renewable power generation activities. Danske Bank has been appointed as an adviser and Ørsted will assess whether there is market interest in the assets, which are well-run but do not fit in Ørsted's long-term renewable growth strategy. So far, the potential transaction is evaluated at DKK8bn-DKK13bn (€1.07bn-€1.74bn). The group will decide on the potential divestment before mid-2019.
Ørsted's residential customer business sells electricity to approximately 733,000 customers and gas to approximately 91,000 customers. The power distribution subsidiary (Radius) has about 1 million customers in the Copenhagen area, North Zealand and parts of central Zealand. It manages a power distribution grid of approximately 19,000 km.
In October 2017, Ørsted already divested its upstream oil and gas business (Dong E&P) to the UK-based petrochemical company INEOS and took advantage of this opportunity to rebrand itself. Wind energy has become the key business unit in the company's portfolio and is scheduled to increase up to 6.5 GW by 2020 from the current 3 GW.