Propelled by energy sales that have been escalating beyond 10% within the stretch of the sweltering El Niño weather condition, power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is favorably looking to end the year with core income jump to P40 billion from P37.1 billion in 2023.

The company’s first quarter consolidated core net income already inched up 11% to P10.083 billion from P9.047 billion in the same period last year; while reported income leveled off at P9.597 billion from P8.071 billion a year ago.

The upturn in the company’s profitability during the quarter, according to Meralco Chief Financial Officer Betty Siy-Yap, resulted in earnings per share of P8.946 for consolidated income; and P8.514 per share for reported income.

In a press briefing, Meralco Chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan forthrightly stated that the company “has been setting the pace in the first quarter with the strong performance of our businesses, which we will strive to sustain throughout the year.”

He emphasized that despite slight downturn in the bottom line outcome of the firm’s power generation portfolio due to maintenance shutdowns, the full-year income for Meralco is “expected to reach over P40 billion.”

Pangilinan expounded “the distribution utility business has been performing very well for the first quarter. And that performance continues with the balance of the year for the next three quarters, especially this time -April; and perhaps continuing through May, where warm weather are predicted to persist.”

On the power generation segment of the business, he conveyed that “because of the scheduled maintenance works that needed to be done in January as part of February, there are certain volumes that were not produced in the first quarter this year. So, the volume produced was so that affected the income of the generation group modestly for the first quarter they started to recover in February.”

He stressed “as the plants started to operate and back to normal in March in terms of the profits and the revenues, and we expect that to continue for the balance of the year, so there will be recovery in the latter nine months of 2024.”

In terms of revenues, Meralco indicated that this was relatively flat at P104.5 billion “due to lower pass- through charges and energy fees, reflecting lower fuel prices compared with 2023.”

It qualified that the downturn on its top line in the first quarter, in particular, had been precipitated by the “decline in prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, of Malampaya gas and of international coal prices as well as lower plant availability” – primarily the Cebu Energy Development Corp. coal plant of subsidiary Global Business Power Corp. in Cebu.”

In terms of sales, residential set a record 12-percent growth to 4,144 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by the end of March vis-à-vis 3,701 GWh a year ago; and that was “pushed by the prolonged usage of cooling appliances at home as the dry spells associated with El Niño persisted.”

For industrial sales, Meralco had logged rebound to 3.0% to 3,448 GWh in the three-month period – and the growth drivers had been the semiconductor, cement, plastics as well as food and beverage sector.

The commercial segment of end-users, on the other, logged 11% to 4,678 GWh within the three-month stretch from last year’s 4,213 GWh.