First Gen’s profit climbed by 28% to $77m in 3 months

By Alena Mae S. Flores – May 10, 2019 at 08:30 pm
from manilastandard.net

First Gen Corp., a Lopez Group company, reported a net income of $77 million (P4 billion) in the first quarter, up 28 percent from $60 million (P3 billion) year-on-year.

First Gen said net income attributable to equity holders in the first quarter reached $81 million (P4.2 billion), up 104 percent from $40 million (P2 billion) in the same period last year, due to the higher electricity sales of its natural gas, geothermal and hydro platforms, foreign exchange gains and lower deferred income taxes.

“First Gen’s conscious choice to focus on clean, low carbon and renewable energy is paying off as the long term prospects of our platform is looking brighter. Our impressive first quarter results have set the tone for the rest of the year driven by the reliable performance of our plants across our clean energy, low carbon platform,” said First Gen president and chief operating officer Francis Giles Puno.

First Gen’s power generation portfolio includes all clean energy sources, namely hydro, solar, wind and geothermal.

“We expect natural gas and hydro to continue to deliver stable earnings, while geothermal should continue to outperform as it benefits from the full recovery of the Leyte assets and realizes the effects of its efficiency, resiliency, and cost-saving initiatives,” said Puno.

The company’s recurring earnings from its geothermal, wind, and solar platform surged to $26 million (P1.4 billion) in the first three months from $14 million (P700 million) in 2018 as the Unified Leyte and Tongonan geothermal plants normalized their operations and delivered higher earnings after recovering from the damage in the Leyte site caused by Typhoon Urduja in December 2017.