Philippines: Meralco's 9-month profit declines to P15.7 billion

Philippines: Meralco's 9-month profit declines to P15.7 billion

Amid continuing robust sales growth, the net income of Manila Electric
Company (Meralco) in nine months this year had been down 3.0-percent to
P15.676 billion from last year's P16.149 billion.

The utility firm's core income had also been trimmed down 5.0-percent to
P14.966 billion, from the year-ago level of P15.795 billion. This translates
to reported P13.91 earnings per share, hence, affording the power utility
firm to declare regular and special dividends to its shareholders.
Meralco's prospective dividend policy is equivalent to 50-percent of its
core income for this year.

Juxtaposed with its overall performance in the first nine month, the company
expressed confidence that they are on target achieving their P19 billion
profit guidance for this year.

Meralco Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said in terms of core net income for
the entire year, "we are comfortable that Meralco will achieve the set core
income of P19 billion." He said the company's core income had been growing
at roughly P1.0 billion a month so the three-month leeway will give them
enough room to reach the goal.

He added that capital expenditures (capex) spending on consolidated basis
for the whole year may hover between P12 billion to P14 billion.

Brisk sales, according to Meralco Senior Vice President Alfredo S. Panlilio
had been generally propelled by the strong sales for the commercial sector
and propped by growing residential customer base.

Sales had been up 9.5-percent to 30,103 gigawatt hours (GWh) or higher by
2,607 GWh from the year-ago level of 27,496 GWh.

Panlilio said the utility firm is targeting its milestone of connecting its
6th million customer by the end of this month, from currently at comfortable
level of 5.98 million.

While at this juncture, he noted that Meralco customers had also been
continually enjoying downtrend in prices - with its passed through
generation charge hitting 12-year low at P3.89 per kilowatt hour; while
overall rates even with the integration of feed-in-tariff (FIT) rates for
renewable energy had been lowest in the last seven years.

Despite sporadic snags on its core businesses, Meralco is still taking the
forefront when it comes to technology innovation push, primarily to meet
changing appetite of better-informed electricity customers.

"Meralco fully recognizes the fast-transforming customer, as well as the
evolving business and industry landscape in an increasingly demanding and
competitive global economy," Pangilinan said.

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Ref:
http://www.mb.com.ph/meralcos-9-month-profit-declines-to-p15-7-billion/

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com