Pangilinan assumes Meralco post as president and CEO

MANILA, Philippines — Business titan Manuel V. Pangilinan, chairman of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), will succeed Ray Espinosa as president and CEO of the country’s biggest power utility.

Espinosa himself disclosed this development ahead of his retirement later this month. He was named president and CEO of Meralco in 2019, succeeding long-time chief Oscar Reyes.

He, however, will continue to be a vital part of the MVP Group as he will take an advisory role in Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC), where he has been serving as a director since 2009.

Touted as one of the country’s best legal minds, Espinosa, the topnotcher in the 1982 Philippine Bar exam, had just a short stint in Meralco but successfully led the company during the challenging COVID-19 pandemic.

During his stint, Espinosa transformed Meralco into a more “customer-centric” company.

“We improved customer service, we cut the service turnaround time. We improved the new bill statement, which is easier to read and we introduced the customer account number,” he told The STAR. noting that customer experience now has significantly improved.

He also put in place initiatives to strengthen the distribution system so that the infrastructure isn’t vulnerable to natural calamities and other potential catastrophes.

During the pandemic, Espinosa also addressed the challenging problem of bill backlogs.

Because of the lockdowns and work-from-home set-ups which hampered Meralco’s field and metering work, customers’ electricity bills piled up, leading to a “bill shock” but Espinosa said this was promptly resolved.

“We resolved this problem quickly,” Espinosa said, by adapting to the situation immediately and putting in additional workforce.

He attributed Meralco’s successful customer response to employees who volunteered their time to take calls from customers.

The backlog in customer calls and concerns during the pandemic reached one million at some point with incoming calls numbering 40,000 a day.

“So by our estimate we needed 3,500 FTEs (full time equivalents), 2,500 of which we outsourced, we got from call center providers while the remaining 1,000 were full volunteers from Meralco,” Espinosa said.

Meralco’s number of customers increased to 7.14 million in 2021 from 6.8 million in 2019, according to Statista.

In the first quarter, Meralco reported consolidated core net income of P9 billion, up by 40 percent from the same quarter in 2022, with power generation’s contribution growing times versus the same period last year.

Consolidated reported net income meanwhile increased by 26 percent to P8.1 billion during the first quarter from P6.4 billion a year ago while consolidated revenues were up by 23 percent to P105.6 billion from P85.9 billion in 2022.

Espinosa said public confidence has returned, post-pandemic.

“The growth in our energy sales volume, particularly the strong performance of the commercial segment, signifies that public confidence has returned and demand for power will certainly continue to increase. With this, we will pursue strategic energy sourcing activities for our medium- and long term requirements as we work to secure supply to ensure sufficient and cost-competitive power for our customers,” Espinosa said in the company’s financial report.