Ayala restructures energy business, creates two holdings companies

By Alena Mae S. Flores – January 19, 2018 at 07:20 pm
from manilastandard.net

The board of Ayala Corp. on Friday approved the restructuring of its energy business that will result in the creation of two wholly-owned platforms, namely renewable energy and thermal energy.

“We recognize that renewables and conventional power are two distinct businesses that attract different types of investors. This move therefore provides AC Energy a sharper proposition and greater flexibility in the event that we broaden our investor base for our platforms,” said AC Energy chief executive officer Eric Francia.

The restructuring will involve the creation of a new holding company—AC Renewables Inc.—the transfer of renewable assets to AC Renewables Inc. and renaming the existing thermal holdings company to ACE Thermal Inc.

“These (renewable and thermal) are two distinct businesses, even the sources of capital which we would need. We view this in a very differentiated manner,” Francia said.

He said the company is looking at investing more in renewable energy both locally and internationally in the next three years.

“RE that’s where we need to do a lot of heavy lifting, we’re just under 300 MW attributable both locally and internationally. We would like to scale that up to 1,000 MW by 2020,” he said.

Francia said the company’s thermal capacity was around 1,300 megawatts with the financial closing of the second unit of the 1,336-megawatt, coal-fired power plant in Dinginin, Bataan.

Ayala has stakes in GNPower Dinginin Ltd. Co. and GNPower Kauswagan Ltd. Co., which owns the 540 MW coal-fired power plant in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte.

Ayala, meanwhile, will retain AC Energy, which earlier served as the holding company, as the umbrella brand for its energy group of companies. AC Energy will primarily consist of AC Renewables Inc. and ACE Thermal Inc.

“AC Energy has scaled up rapidly over the last five years, and we believe that having these two exciting platforms will enable focused strategies and accelerate our growth”, said AC Energy chairman Fernando Zobel de Ayala.

AC Energy is the Ayala Group’s business arm in the energy sector, with investments in renewable energy and conventional power plants.