AboitizPower bags top awards

MANILA, Philippines - Aboitiz Power Corp. (AboitizPower) and Erramon Aboitiz, in his capacity as president and CEO of Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV), have earned outstanding recognition in Asiamoney’s Best Managed Company Awards 2010.

Every year, the international financial magazine recognizes the top small, medium and large cap companies in each major country in the Asian region and also singles out one outstanding executive.

For the Philippines, AboitizPower was named Best Large Cap Company and Erramon Aboitiz, the country’s Top Executive. 

The Best Managed Company and Top Executive awards are industry recognitions and not based on an open poll with completed questionnaires.  Asiamoney journalists speak to people in the industry — CEOs, CIOs and senior executives from fund management and hedge fund companies, as well as senior analysts in brokerages across Asia. Companies are measured against a list of criteria including profitability, market leadership and innovation.

The official announcement of awardees is posted in Asiamoney’s website and published in its December 2010-January 2011 print edition.

Asiamoney also cited AboitizPower’s huge contribution to the bottom line of its parent company, AEV, which in the first nine months of 2010 grew by 389 percent to P14.2 billion from P2.9 bilion in 2009.

It lauded the company’s management of the privatization of two major hydroelectric power  plants,  Magat and Ambuklao-Binga.

AboitizPower is currently one of the major private renewable energy producers in the country. As early as 2001, it launched a clean and renewable energy brand called Cleanergy, which harnesses energy from the company’s geothermal and hydroelectric power plants across the country.

Its hydroelectric generating facilities are located in Ilocos Sur, Isabela, Benguet, and Davao, including the recently inaugurated Sibulan plant, which added 42.5 much-needed megawatts (MW) of Cleanergy to the Mindanao grid.

The company’s geothermal energy assets include the Tiwi plant in Albay and the Makban facility located at the Laguna-Batangas border. It also has thermal generation assets located throughout the Philippines.

In the past two years alone, AboitizPower’s generation capacity has grown from 578 to 2,066 MW.

In response, Erramon Aboitiz, who is also AboitizPower president and CEO, said, “We are truly proud about how our organization was able to execute our business initiatives and cope with the spectacular growth we went through over the past few years. I would like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate all the Aboitiz team members for transforming AboitizPower to what it is today.”

This is not the first time that AboitizPower has been awarded by Asiamoney. In 2008, it was named the Best Managed Medium Cap Company.  

According to Asiamoney, much of the Aboitiz Group’s growth since Erramon Aboitiz became president is “attributable to his managerial prowess — a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the markets.”

“Certainly a lot of the growth that the group’s had has all happened on Erramon’s watch in the last few years and that’s much to his credit,” said one analyst.

The magazine article added that the just-concluded US$105 million sale of Aboitiz Transport System Corp. “offers an example of Erramon’s willingness to make bold, unsentimental business decisions.”  The transport unit had played an integral role in the group’s business for over a century.

The 54-year-old Erramon is the Aboitiz Group’s fifth chief executive and is among the Aboitiz family’s fourth generation of business leaders.  A Business Administration graduate of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, he has worked for the family enterprise since 1978, starting out as a corporate staff member.