Meralco units ‘reversing last year’s losses’
MANILA -Power distributor Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) on Tuesday said its subsidiaries were in the process of reversing the losses incurred the previous year, allaying fears that its power generation business might pull down the company’s bottom line.
Meralco chair Manuel Pangilinan himself said both Global Business Power Corp. (GBP) and Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen) “had already turned positive and are now contributing to Meralco’s bottom line.”
“We should see a significant uptick in the profits of the generation part of the business. So I think we need to allay your concerns and I think in general [it will be] a good year for Meralco as a whole,” he said at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on Tuesday.
To recall, Meralco recorded a 40-percent growth in its consolidated core net income during the quarter to P9 billion thanks to its power generation business led by MGen.
Meralco Q1 profit up 26%; energy sales beat prepandemic level
Impact of ‘Odette’
This is a positive development, considering that GBP, a wholly owned subsidiary of MGen, bled P517.6 million in the same period last year due mainly to the impact of Typhoon “Odette” in the Visayas.
The company rebounded in the first quarter of this year when it contributed P294.6 million to Meralco’s net income.
At the same time, MGen poured in P3.7 billion in earnings in the first three months of 2023, according to Meralco.
Ronnie Aperocho, Meralco first vice president and head of networks, likewise dispelled fears of another round of widespread power interruptions similar to what happened in the Luzon grid on May 8 that affected at least 300,000 of their customers.
He noted that the company was in close coordination with National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) in monitoring supply and demand in the power-hungry grid.
“But as the supply-demand [margin] normalizes with the onset of the rainy season, we may not expect the same power outages to happen this year,” Aperocho added.
The Luzon grid recorded a peak demand of 12,468 megawatts (MW) on May 8, already higher than last year’s 12,113 MW.
The NGCP warned as early as last year that peak demand in 2023 may reach 13,125 MW in the dry season. INQ
