Citicore posts 9% net income hike to P910 million

With its cash stream boosted by the entry of new capacities from its solar plants, the net income of listed firm Citicore Renewable Energy Corp (CREC) climbed 9.0% to P910 million in 2023 versus P834 million in the prior year.

The company’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) also went up by 10% to P1.51 billion from P1.37 billion in 2022, according to the Filipino-led company.

According to Citicore, there had been three-tiered drivers to its profitability: and these were primarily from sale of electricity as the major contributor; then earnings arising from operating lease agreements of its subsidiary Citicore Energy REIT Corp (CREIT) as well as service fees.

Following its capacity ramping up to 285 megawatts from 10 solar farm installations, Citicore further reported substantial 32% hike in revenues to P3.68 billion from P2.79 billion in the previous year.

On the solar development terrain, Citicore President and CEO Oliver Tan said “we built up speed through a combination of pioneering financing activities, securing new projects, sustaining pipeline delivery, and strengthening our foundations in ESG (environmental, social and governance).”

He added “we have laid down our tracks for the past eight (8) years, and we remain confident in our ability to deliver. Not only are we blazing forward knowing how critical our business offering is to the pressing issues of our country, but we are taking our investors through this journey of powering a first world Philippines with pure renewable energy.”

The major cash-raising activities undertaken by the company for the first 1.0-gigawatt installation include the P4.5 billion maiden ASEAN green bond offering that had been rated oversubscribed; as well as the $100 million mezzanine construction green loan facility that was structured by Pentagreen Capital, a debt financing platform jointly owned by HSBC and Temasek of Singapore.

Citicore executives said project funding for the initial gigawatt in their 5.0-GW development pipeline over five-year period had already been fully covered, hence, the capital formation focus now is on the second gigawatt that will bring the company’s total capacity to more than 2,000MW upon completion of the lined up projects.

“CREC is currently constructing its first gigawatt of its 5GW goal in eight (8) project-locations nationwide, driven by its engineering DNA and its end-to-end development and operational capabilities,” the RE firm stressed.

The major take-off point in the firm’s development play in the renewable energy (RE) sector had been the power supply agreements (PSA) for 792MWac capacity – comprising of 430MWac ground-mounted solar and 362MWac onshore wind – that the company won from the green energy auction (GEA) administered by the Department of Energy (DOE) last year.

The recent projects that Citicore was able to advance to commercial operations had been the 115MW Arayat-Mexico solar facility, which is its joint venture with AC Energy of the Ayala group; then the development of its multi-phased Tuy solar farm installation in Batangas had gained traction after securing offtake deal with SM Prime Holdings for at least 90MW of the plant’s capacity.