The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), having posted sales growth of 2 percent in the first three months of the year, bared optimism of doubling its full-year sales performance to 4 percent.
“Although we did end the first quarter at 2 percent, we’d like to improve that the rest of the year and bump that up to 4 percent by year-end,” said Randwill Dinbo Macaranas, Meralco head of investor relations at the online forum hosted by the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) on Friday.
According to Macaranas, sales growth in April provided the optimism for greater electricity sales this year and that in April alone such growth proved above 2 percent already.
“Everyone is feeling a lot of warmer, that should improve our volume. Our April sales is actually ahead of the 2 percent, slightly above 2 percent, so we’d like to see that further improve in the months ahead,” he said.
Meralco sales to residential consumers were earlier seen stabilizing but higher post-Covid mobility and rising temperatures in the months ahead were to push household demand higher.
Macarans said residential electricity consumption is for the most part a function of temperature where the hotter it gets the more households seek comfort by using their airconditioners.
“Hopefully, that helps pump up the residential segment from a decline of 3 percent,” he further said.
Meralco said demand from the commercial sector is seen continuing to ramp up and punch above pre-pandemic levels with the continued re-opening of the economy and higher spending.
As for the industrial sector, electricity sales may be impacted by the economic headwinds and elevated inflation.
Last year, Meralco booked a 19 percent improvement in net income totaling P28.59 billion from previous year’s P24.04 billion as revenues surged 34 percent to P426.53 billion from P318.55 billion..
Meralco distributed 6 percent more electricity totaling 48,916 gigawatt hours (GWh) last year from only 46,073 GWh the year before.
