ACR net income in January-September gets boost from power plants
By Lenie Lectura – November 17, 2020
from Business Mirror
Alsons Consolidated Resources Inc. (ACR), the publicly listed company of the Alcantara Group, posted a net income of P1.67 billion from January to September this year, up from last year’s P587.7 million, mainly due to the strong performance of its power generation facilities.
Net earnings attributable to the parent during the period also surged to P360.59 million from P54.94 million in 2019. Revenues increased to P7.31 billion from P4.67 billion the previous year.
The company’s 210 megawatt (MW) Sarangani Energy Corp. (SEC) baseload coal-fired power plant in Maasim, Sarangani Province continued to be the key revenue and income driver for the company.
The SEC plant began operating at full capacity in October 2019 and currently provides power to key areas in Mindanao including Sarangani Province, General Santos, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, Dipolog, Dapitan, Pagadian, Samal, Tagum, Kidapawan, and Butuan. The $570-million SEC plant is the single largest power investment in Sarangani Province and the entire Region 1.
“For the rest of the year, we remain cautiously optimistic on the financial performance of the company. We expect higher revenues and profit margins from the full commercial operations of the Sarangani Energy plant. We will also reap the benefits of lower operating costs as we continue to maintain cost efficiency measures,” said ACR Deputy Chief Financial Officer Philip Edward B. Sagun.
ACR is Mindanao’s first private-sector power generator. The company has a portfolio of 4 power facilities with an aggregate capacity of 468 MW serving over 8 million people in 14 cities and 11 provinces in the country’s second largest island.
“ACR’s continuing pursuit of new power projects in Sarangani Province, Zamboanga City, Zamboanga del Norte and Negros Occidental is our contribution to the economic recovery of our country by helping create new jobs and stimulate the local economies in these areas,” said ACR Executive Vice President Tirso G. Santillan, Jr.
The company’s projects in the immediate pipeline include the P4.5-billion 14.5 MW Siguil Hydro run of river hydroelectric power plant in Maasim, Sarangani Province and the P16-billion 105 MW San Ramon Power Inc. (SRPI) baseload coal-fired power plant in Zamboanga City.
Construction for the Siguil Hydro plant—ACR’s first foray into renewable energy, is currently ongoing and targeting completion in 2022 making the Siguil Hydro plant available to supply power to the Provinces of Sarangani and South Cotabato, General Santos City, and other areas in the Mindanao grid. The SRPI plant will begin construction in 2021 and will commence operating in early 2024 to deliver baseload power to Zamboanga City and nearby areas.
For the long-term the company is slated to focus on renewables with at least 7 more run-of-river hydroelectric plants in various stages of development. The next two hydro facilities in the pipeline are the 22 MW Siayan (Sindangan) Hydro plant in Zamboanga del Norte and the 42 MW Bago Hydro plant in Negros Occidental—the company’s first power venture outside of Mindanao.
