By Juzel L. Danganan
MANILA, Oct 26 (PNA) — The Manila Electric Company’s (Meralco’s) net income grew by 13 percent year-on-year as of end of the third quarter of 2015.
Meralco senior vice president and chief finance officer Betty Siy-Yap said in its third quarter results briefing Monday that the net income of the distribution utility had hike from Php 14.3 billion to Php 16.15 billion for the entire three quarters of the year.
Manny Pangilinan, chairman of Meralco, also said the second quarter had seen growth that continued in October.
For the past three quarters, on the other hand, the company saw a four percent fall for its consolidated electricity revenues to Php 191.5 billion.
Yap also stressed the revenues was brought by the lower distribution charge, lower pass-on charges due to the lower generation charge, lower oil prices and competitively negotiated power supply agreement (PSA) prices.
Energy sales had a growth of 4.7 percent or 1,243 Gigawatthours (GWh) from 26,253 to 27,496 GWh.
Relatively, the sales growth of Meralco was driven by residential growth at 5.7 percent, commercial customers at 5.6 percent and 2.8 percent from industrial customers.
For the distribution utility’s expenses, there was a 3-percent decrease year-on-year to Php 175.3 billion.
The consolidated core EBITDA of Meralco also had a growth of 2 percent from 2014 to Php 27.1 billion.
The distribution utility also noted a 3.8 percent increase (209,401 customers) to 5.7 million customers.
Meralco explained the residential customers still dominated the count by 91.5 percent, commercial at 8.2 percent and industrial at 0.2 percent.
Overall, the power firm’s customers also saw a fall in the distribution charge to an average of Php 1.38 per kilowatthour (kWh) to Php 1.52 per kWh since July 1, 2015. (PNA)