Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is eyeing to slightly surpass its core profit from 2016 as a surprise surge in sales will be strengthened by intense retail competition and ongoing developments in its power generation business.
A slight improvement in its profit was projected for 2017 as the management is “unable to pin the exact number but it will not be far from that,” Meralco president Oscar Reyes said.
“The reason for that is, number one, some business verticals such as retail electricity have increasingly been very very competitive. Secondly, we’re in business development mode particularly in power generation and that’s reflecting in our results because development expenses are charged as expenses during the year incurred,” he said.
At the end of September, Meralco inked a core net income of P15.4 billion, three percent more from 2016’s 15 billion, Meralco chief finance officer Betty Siy-Yap said.
Its net earnings went up two percent to P15.9 billion from last year’s P15.7 billion.
This was brought by improvement in sales volume despite coming from a high base that grew 4.3 percent to 31,401-gigawatt hours (gWh) and on the increase of customer base of 6.25 million accounts, Reyes added.
Meanwhile, CIS Bayad Center Inc., Radius Telecoms Inc., and Clark Electric Distribution Corp. (CEDC), Meralco’s subsidiaries, added around P570 million to the core net income.
“Meralco’s four percent growth in energy sales volumes, five percent expansion in customer base and three percent increase in consolidated core net income for the first nine months of 2017 are significant achievements, considering the high base in 2016,” Meralco chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said.
