Meralco’s sales growth slowed 7.6% in 3rd quarter

Manila Standard Today
By Alena Mae S. Flores Posted on October 02, 2012   12:01am

Manila Electric Co., the country’s largest power distributor, said Monday it registered a 7.6-percent growth in sales in the third quarter of 2012 from a year ago.

The utility said the third-quarter increase was lower than the first half growth of nearly 10 percent, as cooler temperature and adverse weather conditions reduced sales, a company official said.

“Adverse weather such as [monsoon rains] and typhoon Gener as well as cooler temperature resulted in reduced residential power demand and also affected operations and power demand of commercial and industrial customers,” Meralco president Oscar Reyes said. He did not provide additional third-quarter figures.

Meralco reported that electricity sales volume sold in the first half reached 16,215 gigawatthours, driven by a more robust domestic economy largely unaffected by the Eurozone woes. It said increased household purchasing power as a result of lower inflation and slightly warmer temperatures combined to fuel the surge in demand in the first half.

It said the strong sales performance during the first half was led by the increase in sales from industrial customers, up 14.6 percent, followed by residential and commercial customers, which rose 7.9 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively.

The company said the higher-than-expected volume growth across all customer classes was driven by increased economic activity and the higher number of new customer connections.

Meralco added 83,422 new residential customers in the first half, 4,974 commercial and four new industrial users, bringing the total count to 5.11 million during the period.

Meralco earlier said core net income reached P9 billion in the first half, up 15.4 percent from P7.8 billion on year, due to the higher sales and the approved recovery of its franchise tax.

Meralco revised its full-year profit target to P15.5 billion this year from the original goal of P15 billion, due to the company’s strong performance in the first half.

Consolidated reported net income in the first half amounted to P9.8 billion, up 60 percent from P6 billion on year.     source