By
Lenie Lectura - April 30, 2019
The Manila Electric Co.
(Meralco) posted a 7-percent increase in net income for the first three months
of the year to P5.67 billion, from P5.31 billion in the same period last year.
Core profit at
end-March this year stood at P5.6 billion, 14 percent higher than in the same
period last year. Revenues were up by 7 percent to P73.63 billion at end-March
this year.
While Meralco’s
customer base continues to grow, electricity sales volume grew by only 2
percent to 10,381 gigawatt hours (GWh) at end-March. In the same period last
year, electricity sales volume grew by 8.9 percent over 2017.
This is mainly
attributable to the “high base effect” of the volume attained in 2018 and the
slightly cooler average temperature throughout the quarter.
“There was a mild
growth in sales against a very high base in 2018. We are still
fortunate to have very favorable financial results. Strong sales in the
industrial class of market grew by 4.4 percent in the first quarter; commercial
was up 2.2 percent; and residential hardly grew at 0.4 percent, which sort of
depressed our first-quarter sales,” Meralco President Oscar Reyes said.
The company said the
lower-than-expected sales growth during the first quarter, particularly in the
residential and commercial sectors, were attributable to concerns on higher
interest rates, the weakening of the peso against the US dollar, and their
impact on fuel and commodity prices, exacerbated by the recent red and yellow
alerts caused by the coincident forced outages of several plants.
Meralco sales growth in
April, when most yellow and red alerts occurred, is a “precursor” of how demand
for power will behave for the second quarter.
“I hate to say it, but
second-quarter volume numbers would be good,” Meralco Chairman Manuel
Pangilinan said.
The company is expected
to register a sales growth of 6 percent in April.
“April seems to be
stronger. It’s very warm temperature so we see a bump in residential sales in
April,” Meralco Senior Vice President Alfredo Panlilio said.
Meralco’s customer base
grew by over 4 percent to 6.7 million customer accounts, with 285,000 net new
accounts since March 2018. The residential customer base, which rose by close
to 5 percent, remains at 92 percent of the total customer base. This includes
102,656 prepaid electricity customers, up from 93,522 as of end-March.
Commercial, which
represents 8 percent of the total customer count, and industrial, which
accounts for less than 1 percent of the total, customer accounts increased by 3
percent and 2 percent, respectively, the same rates of increase in the
comparative period in 2018.
Company costs and
expenses during the period grew by 7 percent to P68.52 billion.
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