Aboitiz Power net income drops 22% to P9.5 billion

Manila Bulletin 
By James A. Loyola 
Published: August 4, 2013 
Aboitiz Power Corporation (APC) posted a 22 percent drop in net income to P9.5 billion for the first half of 2013 from P12.2 billion in the same period last year mainly due to a non-recurring loss.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the firm said the revaluation of consolidated dollar-denominated loans and placements resulted to a non-recurring loss of P1.28 billion (versus last year’s gain of P945 million).
In addition, APC realized a one-time, non-recurring expense due to a debt prepayment cost of P93 million.
Adjusting for these one-offs, AEV’s core net income for the first semester of 2013 amounted to P10.9 billion, down by 6 percent year-on-year.
“Our first semester performance is within our expectations. We are seeing good growth in power demand, which will dovetail well with our expansion strategy. Together with our partners – we have plans of investing an estimated P190 billion over the next five years to meet this growing demand,” said APC President Erramon I. Aboitiz.
APC’s generation business accounted for 83 percent of earnings contributions, recording anincome share of P8.1 billion for the first semester of 2013, down 29 percent from last year.
The group’s average price for its power decreased by 11 percent during the first half of 2013. This was due to the decline in both the average selling price of electricity sold to the spot market and average selling price under bilateral contracts of 19 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, APC’s attributable net generation for the semester grew by 5 percent, from 5,096 gigawatt-hours (GWh) to 5,360 GWh for the period in review due to the increase in demand brought about by the hotter weather during the summer months.
Expansions in volumes and margins resulted to a 15 percent growth in the APC power distribution group’s earnings share for the first semester of 2013, from P1.4 billion to P1.6 billion.
Moving forward, AboitizPower expects to reap benefits from the government’s Open Access program.
“We are very pleased with the progress in the implementation of Open Access, which is a great opportunity for us to not only sell power directly to end users but also to provide value adding energy solutions to these customers,” Aboitiz noted.   source