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These are funny old times when the first thing a chief executive does is go out of his way to tell you that profits have crashed at one of his main businesses.
But then British Gas and its parent Centrica under old Etonian chief executive Sam Laidlaw have got into the habit of shuffling uneasily, looking down at their shoes and all but apologising for making the best part of £2 billion profit for the last couple of years.
British Gas has been a hate figure in UK corporate life ever since it was privatised 25 years ago, through the pay and bonuses of Cedric Brown, the unaccountable change of name to Centrica, the record of poor customer service and the regular kicking it has taken for long being the most expensive residential energy supplier.
However, Laidlaw this year appeared to be positively energised by being able to tell the Evening Standard that profits from its British Gas residential supply business had plunged 34% to £379 million, thus avoiding the annual claims by consumer groups of profiteering from the woes of the British consumer. And especially as his firm had recently been the first to cut household prices.
But as British Gas's profit margins are hampered by the high cost of wholesale gas (as they were last year), the other side of Centrica's perfectly hedged group Centrica Energy is minting money from producing gas in Morecambe Bay and the North Sea. In the case of 2008, Centrica Energy posted a soaraway 58% rise to £1.16 billion.
Ah, says Laidlaw, but Centrica Energy is paying tax of up to 75% on its output, taking group taxation levels up to 53% and paying a cool £1 billion to the Treasury. But no profiteering and huge lumps paid into the public finances isn't the half of Laidlaw's good news story.
He has pressed the button on £15 billion of investment - averaging £1.4 billion a year until 2020 - to plug the emerging, yawning energy gap in the UK, to keep the lights on and the gas stoves burning.
He is building new undersea gas storage facilities in spent gas fields to secure winter supplies. He is buying up North Sea gas assets to keep the flows coming into the UK. He is building new state-of-the-art gas power stations.
He has got 50 wind turbines up and running off the east coast of England with plans for another 650 to produce a total of more than 3000 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to about 5% of the country's daily power demand.
And he is creating 1500 "green collar" jobs, staff who will install energy-saving devices in the home, advise companies how to cut their consumption and build renewable energy installations.
On top of all that, its operations servicing Britain's boilers and household appliances, selling energy to businesses and storing gas, and its North American interests, are all booming, together increasing profits by 22% last year to add another £575 million to the coffers
With all that going on, isn't it time we learned to love British Gas a little? Despite Centrica's classically defensive qualities - it continues to make big money even in recession - and an enviable record of not cutting the dividend, currently yielding 5%, the share-price performance would suggest investors have not fallen head over heels.
The elephant in the room for Centrica at present is its commitment to spend an initial £3.1 billion on a 25% stake in the now EDF-owned nuclear electricity generator British Energy - with potentially billions more as their new French partners start spending £20 billion on new nuclear power stations.
UK analysts are fretting that Centrica could be overpaying by about 30% for its entry into nuclear, and the fact the deal is not closed and Laidlaw is still negotiating the exact terms with the French indicates some Centrica directors agree.
But more fundamental is the state of Centrica's core British Gas residential business. British Gas is not making less money because it is being kinder to its customers.
It is making less money because it has lost so many gas customers and those remaining are using far less gas.
British Gas's own statistics reveal it has lost four million gas customers since 2001 when it controlled 67% of the market.
Half a million of those were in the last year, taking its market share to a record low of 43%. Over the same time period, average household gas consumption has plunged by 17% for with household bills now averaging about £100 a month, consumers have wised up to using less energy.
The fear is that this, plus lower wholesale gas energy prices hobbling its gas production margins, will lead to a drop in Centrica's earnings this year.
Having expanded the share base with last autumn's rights issue to pay for the British Energy deal, that could see Centrica forced to cut the dividend, worth more than £600 million to pension funds and private investors.
Centrica-British Gas is in danger of going from a loathed corporate monster to becoming something of a national hero as it leads the revolution in securing the country's energy needs.
Investors might just wish Laidlaw gets back to earning them money.
