First Gen Corp. said Tuesday it posted $84 million in recurring net income attributable to equity holders of the parent company in the first semester, or 4 percent lower than $87 million it earned in the same period last year.
First Gen is a subsidiary of First Philippine Holdings Corp., the investment company of the Lopez family.
First Gen said net income after tax reached $101 million in the first six months, lower than $162 million it registered in the same period last year.
Consolidated revenues from the sale of electricity increased to $851 million in January to June from $804 million in the same period last year.
First Gen said in a disclosure to the stock exchange the company’s merchant power plants partially recovered from the losses in the first quarter, led by higher electricity prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, the country’s trading floor of electricity.
“It was unfortunate that the natural gas plants suffered from lower dispatch in the first half of the year for a variety of reasons. We are hopeful that the dispatch of these plants will catch up especially with the higher cost of coal today,” First Gen president and chief operating officer Francis Giles Puno said.
Puno said First Gen showed that lower carbon and clean gas-fired power from the 414-megawatt San Gabriel natural gas plant was running more reliably and cost-competitive compared to coal plants running on 24-hour base load and on 12-hour mid-merit operations.
First Gen said net income dropped because of the one-time effect of the break funding costs incurred as a result of the $500-million refinancing of Santa Rita power plant’s long-term debt in May and the premium paid for EDC’s partial buyback of its dollar-denominated bonds.
“As one-off events like the Batangas and Leyte earthquakes affect our revenues this year, our power plants have proven resilient by finding ways to deliver power to consumers despite these trying events. We look forward to a better second half as initiatives like our debt reduction program, the EDC tender offer of Macquarie and GIC of Singapore, and the contracting of San Gabriel’s output fall into place. This is a positive period of transformation for the company,” Puno said.