Semirara sees earnings rising 10% to P7 billion

Manila Bulletin
by James Loyola October 10, 2013 

Coal producer Semirara Mining Corporation expects net income this year to grow by about 10 percent to hit its P7-billion target from P6.36 billion in 2012 on back of higher earnings from its power business. 
In an interview, Semirara President Isidro Consunji said he expects the firm’s coal mining business to generate profits of P3 billion this year while their power generation business will contribute about P4 billion to the bottom-line. 
He explained that while the coal business continues to be affected by lower prices, earnings from the power generation have improved following the rehabilitation of their two plants in Batangas in 2011 and 2012. 
However, Consunji said Semirara will be able to recover lost revenues this year and will earn more than it did last year. 
“We will make money this year. We lost money in the first quarter, we lost money in the second quarter, I think we will make money in the third quarter,” he said. 
Consunji noted that their power business is seen to contribute more than the coal segment this year compared to 2012 when coal segment generated more profits. 
Semirara said the net contribution to its 2012 earnings by the coal segment and the power segment are P3.81 billion and P2.55 billion, respectively. 
The results of operation of the coal segment dropped by 7 percent year-on-year due to the lower average price of coal. 
It added that the decrease in the resulting net income was tempered by lower strip ratio and higher volume sold at 7.2 million metric tons compared to 6.5 million MT or a 10 percent increase year-on-year. 
The growth of the company’s consolidated net income mainly came from the power segment which registered a 37 percent improvement from 2011. 
This was brought about by the 32 percent increase in energy generation from 1,860 GWh in 2011 to 2,463 Gwh last year. 
This was achieved due to higher availability of Unit 2 of its Calaca plant at 88 percent with average capacity of 249 MW for a 48 percent and 15 percent improvement, respectively, compared to the previous year, since it came on-line only in the second quarter of 2011 after Phase 1 of rehabilitation. 
Moreover, Unit 1 was commissioned on August 2012 after completion of its major rehabilitation and contributed around 21.6 percent of the total energy generated during the year. source