Metro Pacific books record core net income 

Conglomerate Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) said its core net income in January to September jumped by 28 percent to a record-high P20.8 billion from last year’s P16.2 billion on higher energy sales, according to a report by BusinessMirror.

The company said the contribution from operations rose by 21 percent year-on-year to P24.3 billion mainly due to the strong performance of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), Maynilad Water’s higher billed volumes, and increased traffic on toll roads complemented by higher tariffs. 

“Our power, toll roads and water business continued to deliver double-digit growth in earnings on the back of strong volumes and the impact of long overdue tariff adjustments,” MPIC Chairman, President and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said.

“All our businesses are investing heavily in service quality and operational efficiency to improve the lives of our customers while at the same time growing our sales and core profitability to create value for our investors. With MPIC continuing to maintain a low cost of capital, the company is poised to maintain its very strong growth trajectory for the rest of the year.”

Among the company’s core businesses, power contributed the largest share at P15.3 billion or 63 percent of net operating income. Toll roads and water contributed P5.1 billion and P4.5 billion, respectively, or a combined 39 percent of operating income.

Reported net income rose at a faster rate of 44 percent to P23.1 billion from P16.1 billion, mainly on additional non-recurring gains from MPIC’s real estate business Landco Pacific.

“I think we’ve for the last three, four years, we’ve been showing a decline interest expense in our head office costs. This is reflective of our being able to do every financing at a perfect timing, where the rates before the rates actually went up, and also us continuing to pay down our debts using internally generated funds,” June Cheryl Cabal Revilla, the company’s CFO, said.

“And this is also a function of our lower debt levels at the parent level, gross in net debt by virtue of us using our internally generated funds.”

Income from power, mainly from Meralco, rose 11 percent to P15.33 billion from the previous year’s P13.76 billion, while earnings from toll roads went up by 24 percent to P5.05 billion from P4.07 billion recorded a year ago.

Earnings from the water business rose 29 percent to P4.51 billion from last year’s P3.49 billion, while losses from other businesses, such as light rail and hospitals, narrowed to P612 million from the previous year’s P1.28 billion.