First Gen earnings down in 9 months

MANILA, Philippines —  First Gen Corp. of the Lopez Group saw its earnings decline from January to September this year, mainly due to weaker contributions from its renewable energy (RE) business.

In a regulatory filing, the company said its net income went down by 16.1 percent to $207 million from $246.8 million on a yearly basis.

Consolidated earnings decreased by 25 percent to $271.15 million from $361.52 million, while revenues slipped by 2.3 percent to $1.85 billion from $1.89 billion.

First Gen and its subsidiaries are primarily engaged in the power generation business and operate power plants that utilize natural gas, geothermal, wind, hydroelectric and solar energy.

The geothermal, wind and solar facilities of subsidiary Energy Development Corp. collectively contributed $59.7 million, down by 41.1 percent compared to the same period last year’s $101.4 million.

This was partially offset by higher contributions from hydro and natural gas platforms during the nine-month period.

The income contribution of the hydro platform more than doubled to $15.7 million from $5.9 million, while that of the natural gas business inched up by 2.5 percent to $149.8 million from $146.2 million.

The liquefied natural gas (LNG) business, meanwhile, chipped in $1 million to the bottomline, a turnaround from the $1.9 million net loss incurred in 2023.

Moving forward, First Gen is keen on investing in businesses that would complement its power generation operations.

“In particular, the company intends to play a major role in the development of downstream natural gas transmission and distribution facilities with the completion and operation of its LNG terminal and other projects using renewable sources of energy,” it said.

A subsidiary of listed conglomerate First Philippine Holdings Corp., First Gen is the country’s largest producer of clean energy with over 3,600 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity in its portfolio.

It has allocated a capital expenditure budget of $1.27 billion this year to further beef up its RE and natural gas portfolio as part of efforts to achieve an installed capacity of 13,000 MW by 2030.