Enron’s retail energy provider, Enron Energy Services (EES), hasnot turned a profit to date but is expected to do so by the fourthquarter of this year and “from then on,” said Marty Sunde, EES’senior vice president of sales and marketing.

Formed by Enron several years ago, EES now employs 4,500 and isactive in 42 of the 50 U.S. states. It signed $8 billion incontract obligations for the full-year 1998, which was up from $3.8billion signed for all of 1997.

“I feel good about exceeding the $8 billion figure,” this year,said Sunde. The total annual market EES has to work with is about$280-billion, “so you can see we are only scratching the surface.”

EES guarantees electricity and gas savings to any companysigning a contract, meaning the $8-billion posted in 1997translates to client savings of between $200 million and $600million, he said. The current target market for EES is the Fortune500. “That is where we can deliver the most value and can take overthe ‘business within a business,’ energy management,” he noted.

This year EES will take its business global by expanding outsidethe U.S. into client facilities in Canada, Mexico and Europe. “Ourdomestic clients are asking us to go global with them,” Sunde said.

In its two most recent deals, EES separately signed energymanagement contracts totaling $362 million, including a$116-million deal with Ocean Spray Cranberries and a $246 millionpact with the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. Both contracts covermost of the electricity and natural gas needs of the parties plus anumber of other services.

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