Aboitiz Power income down 53% to P2.9 B in 1st quarter
By Myrna M. Velasco – April 27, 2022, 2:19 PM
from Manila Bulletin
The consolidated net income of listed firm Aboitiz Power Corporation significantly dropped by 53 percent to P2.9 billion in this year’s first quarter from heftier earnings of P6.2 billion on a comparative period in 2021.
The company qualified that last year’s income had just been higher because it “included liquidated damages (LD) for the delay in the construction of GNPD (GNPower Dinginin plant) and business interruption (BI) claims for the GNPower Mariveles Energy Center Ltd. Co. (GMEC) plant outages.”
Within the January-March review period, Aboitiz Power logged P22 million non-recurring loss “primarily due to the revaluation of dollar-denominated liabilities versus the ₱29 million in non-recurring losses from the revaluation of dollar-denominated liabilities recorded during the same period in 2021.”
The company indicated “without these one-off losses, core net income for the first quarter of 2022 was ₱2.9 billion,” which was still noted to have been lower by 53-percent year-on-year.
Aboitiz Power stated its financial outcome should have been better if its facilities and service provision had not been adversely affected by the aftermath of typhoon Odette, and that was aggravated by the advanced planned outages on its generating facilities.
“If the company excludes the impact of liquidated damages and business interruption claims, typhoon Odette and the advanced planned outages, the first quarter of 2022 would have resulted in only a 4-percent decline in consolidated net income compared to the same period in 2021,” the power firm stressed.
Onward though, Aboitiz Power is looking toward a brighter prospect given projections of electricity demand growth; which could be underpinned by added energy sales to be delivered by its Dinginin coal-fired plant – of which unit 1 with 668-megawatt capacity already had its commercial operation last year; while unit 2 (of the same capacity) had been synchronized to the grid on April 23 this year.
Aboitiz Power President and CEO Emmanuel V. Rubio said “we expect electricity demand to grow in the coming months due to the resumption of economic activities of many Filipinos, and as this leads to power reserves in the Luzon and Visayas grids to be squeezed thinner, we at AboitizPower are doing the best we can to prepare for this situation.”
He further pointed out “it is our intention to keep our generation plants running at an optimal capacity to continuously serve the energy needs of our customers, and for our distribution utility in Cebu to assist in demand-side management through the interruptible load program.”
The power generation business segment of the company turned in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of P8.8 billion, posting 26-percent decline vis-à-vis last year’s P11.9 billion.
The capacity sold in the initial three months this 2022 had just been pared slightly by 1.0-percent to 3,534MW from 3,558MW within the same stretch last year; and the resulting energy sold was likewise down by 1.0-percent to 6,055 gigawatt-hours as against 6.130 GWh last year.
At the distribution segment of AP’s operations, income contribution was also lower by 39-percent to P1.3 billion from the year-ago level of P2.1 billion.
“Energy sales slightly decreased by 1% to 1,298 GWh for the first quarter of 2022, compared to 1,308 GWh for the same period in 2021,” the Aboitiz firm said, emphasizing that residential sales, in particular, tailed off due to typhoon Odette’s impact and on account also of cooler weather.
