Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) posted 11 percent growth in its core net income for the first nine months of the year at P18.5 billion, from P16.7 billion a year ago, driven mainly by higher energy sales volume for the period.
Meralco’s energy sales in the past three quarters rose 6.3 percent to 35,005 gigawatt hours (GWh) from the previous year’s 32,921 GWh.
Industrial sales, which represent 29.3 percent of the total energy sales volume, went up by 5.1 percent due to more demand from food, beverage, rubber, plastics and non-metal related manufacturing, the listed power distributor said.
Residential sales, with a share of 31.2 percent, grew 8 percent, while commercial which accounts for 39.2 percent improved by 6 percent, pushed by consumption from real estate, retail trade, hotels and restaurants.
Revenues for the period rose 6 percent to P241.1 billion from P227.4 billion the year earlier.
“Manageable inflation together with increased liquidity in the financial system provides opportunities for growth across all customer segments,” Manuel Pangilinan, Meralco chairman, said yesterday.
“There is no doubt that there will be significant domestic economic expansion with the expected improvement in government public investments in the coming months, in addition to the inflow from remittance of our overseas Filipino workers,” Pangilinan added.
Meralco’s customer count grew 4.2 percent to 6.82 million for the period, from 6.54 million last year. Residential customers representing 92.1 percent of the pool grew by 4.3 percent; commercial with 7.7 percent share went up by 2.8 percent and industrial customers contributing 0.2 percent rose by 2.1 percent.
Meralco’s peak demand for the period hit 7,740 megawatts (MW), a 4.6 percent improvement over last year’s 7,399 MW.
Pangilinan is optimistic the full-year consolidated core net income of Meralco will hit over P23 billion.
“There is no doubt that Meralco has performed responsively in respect of its franchise mandate to provide power at least cost, while maintaining highly reliable and resilient facilities,” he said.
