EDC income drops 3% to P6.4 billion in 3 quarters

MANILA, Philippines — Lopez-led Energy Development Corp. (EDC) reported a three percent decline in net income to P6.4 billion due to higher operating expenses.

“We had about P3.8 billion in additional OPEX (operating expenses), mainly driven by some of our plant maintenance and well work-over activities,” EDC chief executive officer Nestor Vasay said.

“But we expect our OPEX to go down, as we had implemented a number of operational and other efficiency initiatives across the company,” he said.

EDC earlier announced it would focus on improving the reliability and efficiency of its power projects even when natural calamities strike.  It had set a budget of P6.1 billion for the program.

Bulk of the budget was allocated to drilling works in the company’s geothermal asset in Leyte.

EDC registered a 13 percent jump in consolidated revenues to P27.7 billion amid the recovery of its Leyte power plants as well as better performance of its other power assets.

“Our unified Leyte plants had fully recovered from the impact of Typhoon Urduja, with generation volume pretty much catching up with what we had posted during the same period in 2017,” Vasay said.

“Generation volume for the rest of the fleet had also gone up, with Bacman, Tongonan and Palinpinon all registering volume growth of at least 15 percent. Our Burgos wind farm also posted a 21 percent increase in volume, keeping us on track to potentially surpassing its record performance last year,” he said.

The company’s financial position remained strong with a cash balance of P19.3 billion.

Meanwhile, EDC successfully concluded its voluntary delisting tender offer where it accepted and purchased a total of two billion  common shares (out of the 2.04 billion shares) at P7.25 each.

Almost 98.5 percent of the company’s public shareholders participated in the tender offer.

The firm is targeting to delist from the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) on Nov. 29 as part of its corporate strategy to gain greater flexibility.

EDC is a global geothermal energy industry pioneer and the Philippines’ largest renewable energy producer, delivering 1,472 megawatts of clean RE to the country in the form of hydro, solar, and wind power.