Meralco clears P13.6 B in Jan-Sept

MANILA, Philippines - Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, reported a net income of P13.6 billion in the nine months to September, unchanged from last year, officials yesterday said.

With the third quarter results, Meralco chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said the company is expected to exceed its earlier core net income projection of P17 billion for the full year.

“Given our performance to-date and the positive outlook for the remainder of the year, it is likely that Meralco’s consolidated core net income for the full year of 2013 will exceed our earlier guidance of P17 billion,” Pangilinan said.

He said the different segments – residential, commercial and industrial – are all expected to sustain strong demand.

In a briefing, Meralco chief financial officer Betty Siy-Yap said the P13.6 billion reported as of end-September, excludes one-time, exceptional charges.

Consolidated core net income, meanwhile, rose to P13.6 billion, up five percent compared with 2012, she said.

“The volume of energy sold during the first nine months of 2013, reflected a five percent growth despite a major weather disturbance last Aug.19, 2013, which resulted in an estimated 17.9 gigawatt-hour of unserved energy.

“Billed customers grew to 5.3 million, with over 136 thousand new customer accounts since the beginning of the year, reflecting a sustained growth of three percent per year over the last four years,” Meralco said in a separate statement.

The power distributor also reported that consolidated revenues, of which electricity sales account for 99 percent, decreased by three percent to P208.1 billion during the nine-month period.

This, Meralco said, is due to significantly lower average price of purchased power under five new power sales agreements implemented shortly before the start of the current year.

In terms of electricity sales, Meralco reported that this grew by five percent during the first nine months of 2013, buoyed by the sustained healthy demand from the commercial and residential segments, which grew 5.5 percent to 5.6 percent, respectively and supported by a 3.1 percent growth from industrial customers.