Meralco April sales up 11%

By Lenie Lectura – May 28, 2019
from Business Mirror

THE Manila Electric Co.’s (Meralco) energy sales volume for April and May shoot up by 11 percent and 4 percent, respectively, mainly due to higher demand.

“April energy sales growth was 11 percent. It was a hot month so that pushed up the cumulative increase to 4 percent plus,” Meralco Chairman Manuel Pangilinan said.

Meralco’s January to March electricity sales volume went up by 2 percent to 10,381 gigawatts per hour (GWh).

When asked for more details, Meralco Senior Vice President Alfredo Panlilio said in a text message that April electricity sales this year as against April 2018 grew by 10.9 percent. For May, Panlilio said Meralco initially recorded a “4-percent” increase.

He said the growth mainly came from the “residential segment” of the power distribution business “although both commercial and industrial” also improved, brought about by “higher temperature, lower inflation and lower generation rate” last month.

Meralco sales growth in April, when most yellow and red alerts occurred, is a “precursor” of how demand for power will behave for the second quarter.

“I hate to say it, but second-quarter volume numbers would be good,” Pangilinan said during a press conference of the company’s first-quarter financial performance.

Panlilio also said then that “April seems to be stronger. It had a very warm temperature so we saw a bump in residential sales in April.”

Meralco’s customer base grew by over 4 percent to 6.7 million customer accounts, with 285,000 net new accounts since March 2018. The residential customer base, which rose by close to 5 percent, remains at 92 percent of the total customer base. This included 102,656 prepaid electricity customers, up from 93,522 as of end-March.

Commercial, which represented 8 percent of the total customer count, and industrial customer accounts which accounted for less than 1 percent of the total increased by 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively, the same rates of increase in the comparative period in 2018.

Of the total sales volume in the first quarter, Meralco reported that commercial, industrial and residential accounted for 40 percent, 31 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

The commercial segment went up by 2 percent to 4,057 GWh, driven by real estate, hotels and restaurants, and storage facilities. The industrial segment grew 5 percent to 3,068 GWh, boosted by non-metallic, rubber and plastics, and food and beverage sectors.