Alsons earnings up 18% in 9 months

MANILA, Philippines — Earnings of Alsons Consolidated Resources Inc. rose by 18 percent in the nine months ending September on the back of a steady rise in revenues from operations.

ACR reported a net income of P1.35 billion during the period, higher compared to the P1.14 billion recorded last year.

The publicly listed company of the Alcantara Group saw net earnings for the third quarter surged by over 140 percent to P658.22 million from P272.93 million in the same period last year.

Revenue for the nine-month period reached P9.25 billion, up 31 percent from P7.05 billion in 2021.

The company attributed the steady rise in revenues from operations to the constant improvement in power demand in Mindanao, as day to day activities in the island continue to normalize and recover from the effects of the pandemic.

“We expect power demand in Mindanao to be stable for the rest of the year,” ACR deputy chief financial officer Philip Edward Sagun said.

ACR said its 210-megawatt (MW) Sarangani Energy Corp. baseload power plant continued to be the key revenue and income driver for the company.

It currently provides power to key areas in Mindanao including Sarangani Province, General Santos, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, Dipolog, Dapitan, Pagadian, Samal, Tagum, Kidapawan and Butuan.

ACR said the continuing operation of the company’s 100-MW Western Mindanao Power Corp. (WMPC) diesel plant in Zamboanga City also served as another key revenue contributor for the company.

WMPC is the only major power generation facility in the Zamboanga Peninsula, providing power to Zamboanga City and supplying vital ancillary services to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines to help stabilize the power grid in the Western Mindanao Region.

ACR said it is now focused on building up its renewable energy capacity in the next few years.

The company has around eight run-of-river hydroelectric power facilities in the pipeline, the first of which is the 14.5-MW Siguil Hydro power plant currently under construction in Maasim, Sarangani which is targeted to begin operations in 2023.

ACR’s next two hydro power facilities slated for development are a hydro power project in Zamboanga del Norte with a capacity of up to 21 MW, and a hydro power project in the Bago River in Negros Occidental with a planned capacity of up to 42 MW.

ACR chairman and president Nicasio Alcantara earlier said that renewable energy sources would eventually comprise at least half of ACR’s long-term energy mix.

The company, which is Mindanao’s first private-sector power generator, currently has a portfolio of four power facilities with an aggregate capacity of 468 MW serving over eight million people in 14 cities and 11 provinces in the country’s second largest island.