By
Lenie Lectura - May 29, 2018
THE Manila
Electric Co. (Meralco) expects lower energy sales in the second quarter
compared to the first three months of the year.
“April and May are
trending lower. For April this year, the growth was in the
order of about 3.5 percent to 3.6 percent partly because it was half a
degree centigrade cooler, which is unusual for summer. April was
cooler. For May we are seeing about 4.5 percent. That could bring down our
year-to-date May sales to a little over 7.5 percent. The second quarter
will be lower than the first quarter,” Meralco President Oscar S. Reyes said
after the company’s annual meeting on May 8.
Energy sales for the
first quarter of the year stood at 10,145 gigawatt hours, up 8.9 percent from
9,317 GWh in the same period a year ago. The higher temperature, which
averaged 27.1 degrees Celsius, also drove the increase in volume during the
period.
Meralco reported
earlier that unusually strong sales from January to March this year pushed
Meralco’s net income higher by 10 percent to P5.3 billion, while core net
income rose 7 percent to P4.92 billion. Revenues also went up by 6
percent to P70.09 billion.
Reyes said sales volume
for the second quarter, albeit lower than the first quarter, would still be
driven by increased consumption from existing customers and new customers. At
end-March Meralco’s customer count increased to 6.4 million accounts.
He said subscriber base
is growing at a rate of 4 percent to 4.5 percent every year. Load growth is
expected to register at a conservative rate of 3.5 percent.
“It’s a function of how
the economy does well,” Reyes said.
Meralco reiterated that
it remains committed, and has always been ready to invest in capital
expenditures (capex) for a highly resilient, customer-responsive, digitally
enabled distribution business, and fuel-efficient, reliable and
environment-friendly power-generation plants.
As such, the utility
firm is contemplating on a four-year capex of P72 billion for a four-year
period covering June 30, 2019, to July 1, 2023.
“We will probably stick
with that range, about P18 billion per year,” Reyes said. He added that the
capex “will track more or less the same” as the P72.9-billion capex from 2015
to 2019. Meralco, he also said, has yet to spend the remaining P35
billion programmed for the period mid-2017 to 2019.
“Our capex is mainly to
finance our distribution network, to make it more resilient also,” Reyes said.
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