Meralco Q1 profit up 8%

Manila Electric Co. met expectations of improved profitability in the first quarter of 2015 but has not set a core net income outlook for the year.

Meralco posted an 8-percent increase in consolidated core net income to P4.4 billion. Consolidated net income, which includes one-off items, grew 10 percent to P4.4 billion.

The company has not set a core net income outlook for the year, pending an updated supply-demand outlook from energy authorities and guidance from regulators on future required investments, company chair Manuel V. Pangilinan said.

Consolidated revenue increased 14 percent to P62.6 billion.

Energy sales grew 2.3 percent (about 184 gigawatt-hours or GWh) year-on-year to 8,092 GWh in the first quarter from 7,908 GWh a year ago, Meralco president and CEO Oscar S. Reyes said.

Commercial energy sales grew by 3 percent on robust demand from the real estate and trade sectors, ahead of residential (2.4 percent up on customer base growth) and industrial (1.5 percent up on food and beverage, electrical machinery, and miscellaneous machinery).

On the overall mix of energy sales, the commercial sector continued to dominate with almost 39.7 percent of sales volume, followed by the industrial sector with 31.9 percent and residential with 28 percent.

In terms of customer count, Meralco posted a 3.9-percent growth to 5.63 million in the first quarter of 2015 from 5.42 million a year ago.

Residential accounts, making up 5.15 million of the customer base, drove growth. The commercial segment made up 466,000 and the industrial segment numbered 9,854 accounts.

Meralco officials said there were no major forced outages in its franchise area in the first quarter.

The key to longer term power supply and price stability remains in developing and bringing in new highly reliable and life cycle cost competitive generating capacity, Pangilinan said.

“To this end, we are doing our share through our joint ventures for the 455MW (net) San Buenaventura supercritical, and 2x300MW Redondo Peninsula, circulating-fluidized bed coal-fired power plants in Mauban, Quezon and Subic Bay, Zambales, respectively, and other new generating projects under development,” Pangilinan said.