Gentrack Group, the New Zealand utilities software company listed on the NZX and ASX, has acquired Factor, a Wellington startup that builds software for pricing commercial electricity contracts. Gentrack announced the deal on 18 May 2026. Completion took place on 15 May, at the same time as the sale and purchase agreement was signed.
Gentrack paid an enterprise value of NZ$24 million (about $14.2 million) for Prospero Energy Limited, the company that trades as Factor. The deal also carries an earn-out of up to NZ$10 million (about $5.9 million), payable if Factor lifts its annual recurring revenue to around NZ$17 million (about $10 million) within the first three years. Gentrack said it funded the purchase entirely from existing cash reserves.
Factor's product is being added to Gentrack's g2 platform, but the company said it would also keep selling Factor as a standalone product. Gentrack chief executive Gary Miles said the whole Factor team was joining and would be introduced to customers within a week of the deal.
What Factor built
Factor makes forecasting and pricing software for energy retailers that sell to large business customers. According to Gentrack, pricing a single business-to-business energy contract can involve more than 20 manual steps, much of it done in spreadsheets with data pulled from several places. Factor replaces that work with one calculation engine and a shared energy data model that retailers call through APIs.
The software handles power purchase agreements, virtual power plants, time-of-use and type-of-use pricing, flexible contracts, commissions for third-party intermediaries and settlements. Investor Blackbird describes it as a SaaS toolkit for energy pricing and forecasting, with a forecast library, reusable charge logic and API control. Icehouse Ventures said the product uses machine learning to replace spreadsheet pricing processes that could take days or weeks.
Gentrack said Factor was already live with customers in Australia and the United Kingdom. It needs no upfront implementation project and can be deployed on the same day, which Gentrack said makes its sales cycles much shorter than those for billing or CRM systems.
“Pricing is one of the most critical capabilities for retailer success in today’s volatile energy markets. It is a strategic pillar we wanted to add to our g2 stack.”
Why Gentrack is buying
Gentrack sells billing, customer engagement and retail operations software to more than 60 energy and water utilities in over 40 regulated markets, and has a global team of more than 800 people. Its g2 platform is built with Salesforce and AWS, and Factor already had partnerships with both companies, which Gentrack said should make integration straightforward.
The company framed pricing as a gap in its product set. It said large businesses use about 70 per cent of the world's electricity and that close to US$1 trillion changes hands each year in commercial, industrial and agricultural energy supply. Miles said pricing had become one of the most important capabilities for retailers in volatile markets and that it was a strategic pillar Gentrack wanted in g2.
Mike Carruthers, Gentrack's chief strategy officer, said utilities needed to price and respond to faster-moving markets, and that pairing Factor with g2's billing and customer experience tools gave Gentrack an end-to-end retail operations platform.
The founders and the funding
Factor was founded by Jessica Venning-Bryan, its chief executive, and Simon Pohlen. Both were part of the founding team at Flick Electric, the New Zealand electricity retailer, and Icehouse Ventures said they had also worked with Flux Federation before starting Factor.
Icehouse Ventures said it led Factor's pre-seed round of $3.2 million in 2025. Its company page did not state the currency; the figure would be about $1.9 million if it refers to New Zealand dollars. Blackbird lists Factor in its portfolio with an investment year of 2024. Icehouse said the sale came 382 days after it led the round and put the headline value at $34.9 million, a figure that matches the NZ$24 million enterprise value plus the maximum earn-out.
Venning-Bryan said Factor's aim had been to change how utilities price energy and to create financial incentives for electrification and demand response, and that Gentrack's backing would help it reach the companies that most needed the product.
What it means for Gentrack's numbers
Gentrack said the effect of the deal was already included in the updated guidance it issued on 5 May 2026. Because little of its 2026 financial year remained, it expected the acquisition to have a limited impact on revenue this year. On its target growth rates, and without counting any lift in g2 sales, Gentrack said the deal would become accretive to earnings per share in its 2028 financial year.
The purchase is Gentrack's second deal announced in a matter of weeks. On 30 April the company said that Veovo, its airports division, had agreed to acquire Dubai Technology Partners.
