With its power generation assets as income driver, this year’s first quarter earnings of Aboitiz Power Corporation jumped by 4.0% to P7.9 billion from year-ago level of P7.5 billion within comparative period in 2023.

Without the non-recurring items, the company qualified that its profits would have climbed just slightly by 3.0% to P7.8 billion versus last year’s P7.6 billion.

According to the power firm, its electric generating assets yielded “higher portfolio margins”; although actual sales had been flattish with a marginal growth of 1.0% to 8,812 gigawatt hours (GWh) from 8,725 GWh within the same three-month stretch in 2023.

Aboitiz Power President and CEO Emmanuel V. Rubio vouched that the company “continued its strong performance in the first quarter of 2024, building on its successful 2023” – wherein it posted full-year income of P33.1 billion.  

He added that such momentum in the company’s profitability “reflects the effectiveness of our investments and growth strategies.”

On earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) basis, the company logged P13.8 billion within January to March this year from P13.1 billion in the prior year.

Moving forward, Rubio indicated that the newly commissioned power facilities of the company would bring in added digits into its top and bottom lines in the succeeding quarters of financial performance.

Within the first half of this year, Aboitiz Power is bringing online commercially at least 176 megawatts of new capacities – primarily from its solar and geothermal expansion ventures.

The additional capacity injection, the power firm emphasized, would be part of the 1,200MW  expansion that it is concretizing as part of the firm’s overall portfolio rebalancing that it is targeting to bring to fruition by the turn of the decade.

It expounded that additional 218MW of greenfield projects are underdoing construction and completion phases; and that will be complemented by 1,700MW of new solar and wind farm projects moving forward.

The firm earmarked P73 billion worth of capital outlay for expansion projects – and that will cover its planned coal plant expansion in Cebu, the blueprinted RE projects as well as its investment for an integrated liquefied natural gas (LNG) venture for its partnership with the power generation subsidiary of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) under Chromite Gas Holdings.

As designed, LNG is widely perceived as “a natural complement to variable renewable energy due to its ability to ramp up output more quickly, addressing the intermittencies of solar and wind power.”

On top of that, the Aboitiz group will also funnel investments into land acquisition for its project sites as well as for the installation of new substations and meters in the distribution segment of its business.