NVM Private Equity (NVM) has made a £4.5m investment in Bolton-based B2B energy comparison company Love Energy Savings (LES), the parties have announced.

LES is a comparison and procurement service specialising in helping SMEs identify the optimal gas and electricity supplier and tariff to suit their needs.

The cash injection will be put towards growing the management team over the coming months and servicing a growing number of customers with its in-house platform that manages switching processes for SME clients.

LES was established in 2007 in order to target the non-domestic energy user market that, whilst comprising around c2.4 million SME contracts, had been slower to embrace the opportunities offered by deregulation than the domestic market.

Now, as LES’s portfolio has grown to almost 16,000 live client contracts there are clear signs that SMEs are increasingly using the services offered by intermediaries such as LES. It is anticipated that many more such businesses will look to switch their gas and electricity provider in the coming years.

LES managing director Phil Foster said NVM had come highly recommended as “the perfect partner to allow LES to achieve its ambitions”. He added that this has “been proven to be the case”.

“I’m delighted that we’ve been able to move forward with them and I’m very excited about the future,” he continued.

“Having Andy and his team on board will provide LES with a catalyst to reach out to every business to allow them to make smarter choices regarding their energy at contract renewal in a simple and transparent way, allowing them to generate more profit through savings.”

Andy Leach, the lead investment partner at NVM on the transaction, added he was “delighted to be supporting a young and vibrant business”.

“Phil and his team have built a great business in a relatively short period based on a market leading IT platform, where the culture of customer service and transparency is at the heart of the way they operate,” he said.

“The business energy market is too complex for most small businesses to properly understand and LES, with access to a wide range of tariffs and an intimate understanding of the market is perfectly placed to improve the ability of SMEs to buy energy better.”

Further reading: The link between entrepreneurship and happiness