Thailand’s PTT eyes 12% income hike this year

MANILA, Philippines - PTT Philippines Corp. (PTTPC), the local subsidiary of Thailand’s petroleum giant, said it expects its net income to hit P458 million this year or 12 percent higher than last year on the back of improving revenues.

In 2013, the oil firm recorded a net income of P408 million.

However, for next year, revenues may be affected by lower oil prices, which have been on a downtrend since the second half of the year, said PTTPC general manager Danilo Alabado in a briefing yesterday.

“Next year, net income is seen growing by five to six percent but prices are down,” he said. With higher oil prices, the company can book a higher net income as well.

He said oil prices will remain weak in the next few weeks and possibly stretch to 2015.

“It might even be weaker in 2015 compared to 2014,” Alabado said.

As of end-October this year, the company generated P30.62 billion in revenues or 30 percent more than the revenues recorded a year ago as PTTPC sold 857 million liters of oil, 25 percent more than its sales in the comparative period in 2013.

By end-2014, PTT is expected to post P30.6 billion in revenue. In 2013, it booked P26 billion.

Next year, PTTPC is targeting to book revenues of P33.07 billion as it expects to sell 1.05 billion liters of fuel.

To date, the Thai oil firm has 76 retail stations in Metro Manila, Luzon and Cebu, with plans to bring this to 150 stations in the next five years.

“We aim to expand in the Northern Luzon area,” said PTTPC operations and logistics director Korawat Sungmongkol.

In all, he said the company is targeting to construct 15 more service stations next year.

“Thirty percent of the planned new stations will be medium to large stations while 70 percent are small to medium stations. We aim to expand in Pangasinan going down south to Batangas, and also maybe in Cebu,” Sungmongkol said.

Currently, PTT operates the bigger Platinum and the smaller-sized Premier stations, both patterned after its service stations in Thailand.