Plant shutdowns pull down Semirara earnings in 2018

MANILA, Philippines — Power plant shutdowns have pulled down earnings of Semirara Mining and Power Corp. (SMPC) last year.

In a filing with the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday, SMPC reported a 15 percent drop in consolidated net to P12 billion in 2018.

The coal segment, SEM-Calaca Power Corp. (SCPC) and Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp. (SLPGC) contributed P5.9 billion, P4.5 billion and P1.6 billion, respectively.

The coal business registered lower production during the period, but this was offset by better selling prices.

SMPC’s coal segment booked core profits of P9.7 billion, up eight percent.

Production slipped by two percent to 12.9 million MT due to continuous heavy rains in July and August.

This pulled coal sales down by 12 percent to 11.6 million MT.  Uptake by domestic customers dropped two percent, while coal exports sales declined by 22 percent due to lower production.

However, the 18 percent improvement in average selling price per ton offset the drop in sales volume, resulting in a four percent hike in higher coal revenues to P30.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the power business performed negatively last year on the back of several power plant breakdowns.

Core profits of SCPC fell 47 percent to P1.2 billion, while SLPGC’s core profits declined by 67 percent to P1 billion.

SCPC—which owns and operates the 2x300-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant in Calaca, Batangas—registered a seven percent decline in gross generation to 3,282 gigawatt-hours (gwh).

“Unit 2 was on maintenance shutdown for the first three months of the year, and the maintenance activities spilled over up to the first week of April,” SMPC said.

“Following a brief shutdown in March, unit 1 ran continuously, save for a four-day shutdown in June, it ran continuously for 201 days before it was shut down on Dec. 30 to start its life extension program,” it said.

This dragged sales volume by six percent to 3,342 gwh. With 10 percent improvement in prices, SCPC’s total revenues increased three percent to P13.7 billion.

For SLPGC, gross generation dropped 19 percent 1,368 gwh.

While SLPGC’s Unit 2 ran stably starting April 16, it experienced an 11-hour disruption in June due to transmission line fault and two emergency outages totaling to 19.5 hours in September.

SLPGC composite average price per kilowatt hour decreased by 11 percent percent to P3.94. Sales volume declined by 20 percent as a result of the prolonged shutdown of SLPGC’s Unit 1.