Meralco core income hits P4 B in Q1

MANILA, Philippines - Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, reported yesterday a core net income of P4 billion in the first quarter of the year, up 18 percent from P3.4 billion recorded a year ago despite lower revenues.

In a financial report, Meralco attributed the increase in its net income to the sustained increase in the number of customer accounts and the faster energization of new property developments including the recent opening of Solaire Resorts, a hotel-casino complex at the Pagcor’s Entertainment City.

Meralco chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said the first quarter income “was slightly ahead of expectation,” adding that core income for the year is also expected top last year’s level given the better-than-expected first quarter performance.

In a separate briefing yesterday, Meralco officials reported that consolidated electric revenues in January to March declined one percent to P64.2 billion from P65.1 billion in 2012.

“The lower electric revenues were largely due to the effect of lower pass-through charges during the three-month period, slightly offset by the moderate increase in energy sales volume,” Meralco said.

Nevertheless, consolidated volume of energy sales for the first quarter of 2013 rose one percent to 7,777 gigawatt-hours compared to a year ago.

The number of billed customers increased to more than 5.2 million with an additional 165,000 customer accounts since March 2012.

“Overall revenue from sale of electricity was lower year-on-year as the company began to realize the full period effect of the new power sales agreements, which resulted in lower generation charges to Meralco customers,” Meralco said.

Furthermore, the overall combined generation costs and system loss charged to customers for the first quarter of 2013 were lower at P5.79 pew kilowatt-hour despite the additional charges for generation rate adjustment mechanism (GRAM) and incremental currency exchange rate adjustment (ICERA) of the National Power Corp. (Napocor) that were reflected in end-users’ bills beginning April 2012.