AC Energy 2019 income balloons to P 24.6B

AC Energy Inc. said its net earnings ballooned six times to P24.6 billion in 2019 from P4.1 billion in 2018 as new solar farms in Vietnam went online and while the Ayala subsidiary partially unloaded its thermal assets in the Philippines.

Such performance was also attributed to the recovery of costs incurred from ad­justments in the construction and operation of its power plants.

The company said it racked up 1.8 gigawatts of attributable power generation capacity from assets already in operation as well as those still being built—all spread across the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam.

AC Energy said its gene­ration assets produced 3,500 gigawatt-hours, or 3.5 million kilowatt-hours, an increase of 25 percent from its 2018 output.

Half of the electricity produced last year came from renewable energy projects.

“As we shift our portfolio towards renewable energy, AC Energy has developed a pipeline of more than 1,000 megawatts in various renewable projects in the Philippines and overseas that are expected to reach financial close within 2020,” AC Energy president and chief executive John Eric Francia said in a statement.

“This is in line with the company’s goal of achieving 5,000 MW of renewables capa­city by 2025,” Francia said.

To scale up its renewable energy investments, AC Energy last year issued two green bonds from which it raised $810 million in fresh capital.

The first issuance was AC Energy’s maiden green bonds and fetched a total amount of $410 million.

From the second one, touted as the first US dollar-denominated, fixed-for-life green bond issued globally, AC Energy raised $400 million.

“We will continue to expand and diversify our generation capacity, and we will make significant strides towards our goal of becoming the leader in renewable energy across the region,” Francia said. INQ