First Gen reports 11% income hike to $56 million

Business Mirror

Published on Thursday, 16 May 2013 19:51

Written by Lenie Lectura / Reporter

FIRST Gen Corp. of the Lopez group on Thursday posted a net income of $55.8 million in the first three months of the year, an increase of 11 percent from the $50.3 million recorded in the same period last year. 

The improved figure was mainly a result of higher income booked by the 1,500-megawatt (MW) First Gas (FG) power plants, higher sales volume and trading gains from Energy Development Corp.’s (EDC) geothermal plants, and savings from interest expense. 

“With First Gen’s purchase of BG Group’s 40-percent stake in the Santa Rita and San Lorenzo natural gas-fired power plants, additional income of $9.9 million from the acquired minority stake was booked. In total, the First Gas plants contributed $24.8 million to the company’s attributable net income for the first quarter of 2013,” First Gen said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.

EDC’s geothermal assets contributed $26.3 million in attributable earnings for the period from $21.4 million in 2012. “FG’s hydro plants contributed an attributable income of $12.1 million to First Gen for the first quarter of 2013, compared with $17.8 million for the same period in 2012.”

First Gen directly owns 40 percent of FG Hydro, while the remaining 60 percent is owned by EDC. 

First Gen also reported lower interest expense for the first quarter at $37.5 million from $44.3 million  due to the series of refinancing exercises which allowed it to prepay over $250 million in debts and redeem the remaining $57 million convertible bonds that matured in February.

“We continue to deliver strong financial and operational results for the first quarter of 2013 despite the delay suffered by BacMan’s rehabilitation works and the unfortunate landslide at the Unified Leyte site. We continue working hard to deliver the commitments we’ve made, especially on BacMan [referring to the Bacon-Manito facility], and we are intent on delivering our growth projects across the platform,”  First Gen President Francis Giles B. Puno said.

EDC ordered the shutdown of BacMan Unit 1 for inspection. The facility straddles the towns of Bacon in Sorsogon and Manito in Albay.

Unit 2 of the BacMan facility was earlier shut down after a turbine blade was sheared off, causing damage to the unit. As a precaution, EDC also suspended the operation of Unit 1.   source