By Myrna M. Velasco
The Ayala conglomerate will be consolidating its ventures in en¬ergy, water, transport and logistics businesses under its wholly owned subsidiary AC Energy, Inc., which in turn will be renamed AC Energy and Infrastructure Corporation.
Ayala President and Chief Operating Officer Fernando Zobel de Ayala
This was announced by Ayala Corporation Chairman and CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala ahead of the annual stockholders meeting of the company’s energy unit AC Energy Philippines on Monday (April 20).
Zobel opined that by consolidating the various infrastructure interests of the conglomerate, this could “create a formidable platform with a strong balance sheet and allows Ayala to participate in the many opportunities in infrastructure development in a more significant way.”
Ayala President and Chief Operating Officer Fernando Zobel de Ayala similarly echoed that “the consolidation can generate a host of opportunities for our various infrastructure businesses, ” with him emphasizing that the group will “continue the rapid expansion of AC Energy in the re-newables space and scale up our investments in transport and logistics.”
At the same time, he noted that the conglomerate “will continue to invest significantly in the water sector to en¬sure long term water sustainability and reliability.”
For the year, it was noted that the goal will be to log attributable capacity of 1,500 megawatts, of which half shall be coming from renewable energy sources.
Eric Francia, president and CEO of AC Energy Philippines, said the company will be shoring up its balance sheet by ₱20 billion more this year, which will be triple from where it stands currently.
AC Energy had cash infusion of ₱2.6 billion via subscription of primary shares in June last year; then that was buoyed at more than ₱14 billion through recent infusion of power generation assets. The company also lined up a ₱5.0 billion stock rights offer¬ing (SRO), but that is still due for completion.
“With a bigger balance sheet, the company expanded its generation capacity from 416MW to well over 1,100 megawatts,” Francia said.
He added that the Ayala group will continue “to expand and diversify our generation capacity and will target to exceed 1,500MW of capacity to 2020 and significantly increase our renewables capacity.”
For full year 2020, the AC Energy president indicated that the goal is to have a “positive bottom line” from a loss of ₱417 million last year.
“While we are facing significant challenges amidst the cur¬rent crisis, the company remains solid and steadfast in its commitment to a sustainable future,” Francia said.
Further, the Ayala firm emphasized that it will enhance the operating efficiencies of its thermal plants – at least to improve its availability by more than 20- percent.
The thermal plants of the firm are mainly the coal-fired generating power plants in Mariveles, Bataan; and in Calaca, Batangas.