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Jeff Skilling, President and COO; Ken Lay, Chairman and CEO; and Joe Sutton, Vice Chairman
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We believe the future will be even more rewarding. We remain the world's leader in wholesale and retail energy services. Our new broadband subsidiary, Enron Broadband Services, is redefining Internet performance by designing and supplying a full range of premium broadband delivery services. The value of products bought and sold on our new eCommerce platform, EnronOnlineTM, is destined to exceed the value transacted on any current eCommerce web site. To reap greater growth and value in our traditional energy businesses without a parallel increase in capital spending, we have evolved into a series of global networks -each of which is a leader in its specific region. These networks work our physical assets harder and drive more high-return products and services into the market. We believe that our broad networks will give us unbeatable scale and scope in every business in every region in which we operate.
Networks now serve as our business platform. They increase our agility and speed our response. They produce more and better options for customers. And they increase returns.
The New Economy
We are participating in a New Economy, and the rules have changed dramatically. What you own is not as important as what you know. Hard-wired businesses, such as energy and communications, have turned into knowledge-based industries that place a premium on creativity. Enron has been and always will be the consummate innovator because of our extraordinary people. It is our intellectual capital--not only our physical assets--that makes us Enron. Move our assets to another company, and the results would be markedly different.
When you define a New Economy company, you define Enron. A New Economy enterprise exhibits four traits:
1. Its strength comes from knowledge, not just from physical assets.
Enron has become a pre-eminent energy and communications company not only by building and controlling physical assets, but also from our unique ability to add knowledge to those assets to create a market-making network, such as our electricity and natural gas markets in North America and Europe.
2. A New Economy player must operate globally--effortlessly transferring ideas, people and services from region to region.
Our knowledge and expertise crisscross the globe. What we've learned about natural gas pipelines in the United States helps us build new natural gas markets in South America and India. Our knowledge of optimizing capacity in energy networks will allow us to revolutionize the bandwidth market.
3. New Economy companies understand that constant innovation is their only defense against competition.
Enron often introduces a product before the competition even senses a market exists. Cross-commodity trading, weather derivatives, energy outsourcing and 1999's two major initiatives -EnronOnline and Enron Broadband Services- demonstrate our resourcefulness. No wonder a Fortune survey recently named Enron the "Most Innovative Company in America" for an unprecedented fifth year in a row.
4. Success in the New Economy requires the adroit use of information to restructure an organization and boost productivity.
The connectivity of our networks allows us to gather massive amounts of market data to provide instant market snapshots and to identify emerging trends. This information is available to, and accessed by, every Enron marketer and originator in every part of the world, ensuring that we make informed moves and spot opportunities at the first possible moment.
The fluidity of knowledge and skills throughout Enron increasingly enables us to capture value in the New Economy.
Network Elements
Enron continues to be one of the most efficient developers and builders of physical assets. Assets form the foundation of network businesses that sell up and down the value chain. Layered on top of our physical assets are: (1) strategic contractual relationships, which ensure us access to other people's physical assets without owning them ourselves, and (2) our market-making ability, which allows us to draw on the most flexible, most efficient components to create higher-value products and services for our customers.
By structuring our operations as flexible networks, we can accelerate our growth with minimal capital expenditures. Physical assets play a strategic, but not central, role in the way we earn our money, and this reduced emphasis on merely earning a return on physical assets allows us to divest non-strategic assets and redeploy capital into higher-growth and stronger-return businesses. This led to several important transactions last year.
In August we completed a sale and exchange of our interest in Enron Oil & Gas Company (EOG). As part of this transaction, Enron retained certain international operations to create a global upstream function to serve our regional business units. The transaction generated approximately $1 billion in cash proceeds that will be invested in other areas.
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EnronOnline
Enron's primary competitive advantage is to identify opportunities and gain an early lead that we never surrender. Clearly we have gained the first-mover advantage with our new eCommerce application, EnronOnline. Other services exist, but EnronOnline is the only global principal-based system that allows users to view real-time prices for a range of energy and related commodities and transact instantaneously. Its ease-of-use and price transparency have been enthusiastically received by our counterparties.
EnronOnline is increasing our overall volume of transactions and our market share. Ultimately, EnronOnline will become one of the world's largest eCommerce businesses. In 2000, we expect the notional value of goods bought and sold on EnronOnline to be at least $40 billion, many times the value sold online by successful eMerchants such as Dell, Cisco or Intel. Furthermore, we will leverage EnronOnline to present more products and services, including many that do not yet exist. Clearly EnronOnline will be a significant catalyst for growth.
Enron Broadband Services
Enron's entry into the communications business is a logical extension of our skills and experience. The industry is strikingly similar to the natural gas industry of the mid-1980s. At that time, Enron remade an industry characterized by inflexible and rigid business relationships and contracts, which caused either crippling shortages or massive inefficiencies. Enron challenged conventional thinking and helped open the industry for effective competition. We have the capacity to develop a similar efficient market for bandwidth.
As EnronOnline demonstrates, the Internet is changing the way we do business. The public Internet, however, does not have sufficient bandwidth capacity to carry massive data and rich media content to the desktop. In 1999 we rolled out Enron Broadband Services to take the Internet to the next level. Demand for premium broadband delivery services is expected to soar by 150 percent annually from now through 2004. This market could easily surpass the combined markets for natural gas and electricity.
Enron Broadband Services is off to a tremendous start: we own and operate a superior intelligent fiber optic network that is focused on delivering bandwidth-intensive content, such as TV-quality video, over the Internet. Our goal is to be the premier provider of high-bandwidth services and applications worldwide. The business model we follow is the one we used to create liquid markets for natural gas and electricity. We are establishing benchmark bandwidth contracts and making a market in bandwidth. We initiated the first bandwidth trade in December 1999. The market for bandwidth intermediation will grow from $30 billion in 2000 to $95 billion in 2004. With our head start, we expect to become the leader in this field.
1999 Accomplishments
In addition to executing our plans for Enron Broadband Services and EnronOnline, our employees helped us reach several significant milestones in 1999:
Enron Energy Services
In 1999 we proved that Enron's retail business works. We exceeded our goal by signing energy outsourcing contracts representing $8.5 billion in total contract value, more than double the $3.8 billion achieved in 1998. Enron Energy Services achieved positive earnings in the fourth quarter, and its profitability is expanding rapidly.
Our persistence in the retail energy market has given us an unassailable competitive advantage. While many companies waited on the sidelines to see how domestic electricity deregulation would progress, we built a business independent of deregulation. Now the retail energy outsourcing market is gaining momentum, and for the competition, catch-up will be a hard game to play.
The widening of our lead in the North American wholesale energy markets
We viewed 1999 as a milestone for Enron North America. Our position as No. 1 in multiple energy markets grew so strong that it no longer is challenged by any single competitor. Our volume of day-to-day merchant activities is extraordinary, and that volume will grow sharply as electricity deregulation accelerates and natural gas demand increases. In 1999 we executed our plan to quickly develop, site and build three peaking power plants, which were up and running in less than a year, to meet last summer's peak demand. These plants, designed to operate only when justified by electricity prices, are switched on directly from our power marketing floor in Houston.
Enron Europe
When fully opened, the size of Europe's wholesale electricity market will rival that of the United States, and Enron will be ready. We have had a presence in Europe since 1989; today we have 1,750 Enron employees throughout Europe to provide commodities marketing, risk management, gas services and wholesale electricity sales. We command a leading position in every energy market that has opened. With our competitors just opening up shop, we have a clear first-mover advantage.
Developing Wholesale Networks
Our wholesale networks in India and South America gained critical mass in 1999, paving the way for integrated, region-wide activities in both energy and broadband services. With the completion of Phase I of the Dabhol Power Project in India and the successful financing of Phase II, we are well on our way to developing a natural gas network on the west coast of India. In South America, we have established natural gas pipelines and power plants and we operate electricity and natural gas distribution networks. Our vision of building an energy network throughout the Southern Cone is now a reality.
The Enron Culture
Creativity is a fragile commodity. Put a creative person in a bureaucratic atmosphere, and the creative output will die. We support employees with the most innovative culture possible, where people are measured not by how many mistakes they make but how often they try.
Our culture of innovation is difficult to duplicate. Individuals are empowered to do what they think is best, and most of our outstanding initiatives in 1999 came directly from our own ranks. Our philosophy is to not stand in the way of our employees, so we don't insist on hierarchical approval. We do, however, keep a keen eye on how prudent they are, and rigorously evaluate and control the risk involved in each of our activities. We insist on results, and the results have been quite good. Throughout this annual report, you will see how enthusiastic, motivated people have created their own networks of Enron-wide talent and resources to quickly advance ideas.
We are doing something that is recognized outside the company. This year, in addition to again naming us "America's Most Innovative Company," Fortune ranked Enron "No. 1 in Quality of Management" and "No. 2 in Employee Talent" of all American companies. The magazine also acknowledged us as one of the 25 best places to work in America. We recognize that our intellectual capital is our most important asset, and we cherish it. All employees are shareholders. Our values of communication, integrity, respect and excellence are equally applicable to our dealings with each other as with our customers and suppliers.
Increasingly, energy will serve as our entrée to customers who can benefit from Enron's intellectual capital and services. The fundamental skills and expertise we use to develop energy and communications solutions can be applied to many situations that inhibit our customers' profits and growth. It is that core of expertise, rather than tradition, that will define Enron in the future.
Kenneth L. Lay
Jeffrey K. Skilling
Joseph W. Sutton