Lower earnings from both its generation and distribution portfolios pulled the profitability of Aboitiz Power Corporation (AP) to a 15 percent decline during the first half to P1.9 billion from last year’s P2.19 billion.

The company emphasized that its acquisition of the 747-megawatt Tiwi and Makiling-Banahaw (MakBan) geothermal plants in May prompted it to book one-off expenses – P113 million of which has been treated as acquisition-related costs; while P152 million in losses have been attributable
to the settlement of foreign exchange forward contracts for hedging on the down payment it made to the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) for the facilities.

When the non-recurring net loss of P268 million is factored in, AP said its total net income for the period will just be at P1.6 billion, translated to P0.22 earnings per share.

Of the business segments, AP noted that power generation had income contribution of P1.0 billion, albeit this is 21 percent lower than last year’s P1.3 billion.

When non-recurring items are booked, the earnings reduction from its power generation business could be tamed to 8.0 percent year-on-year to P1.3 billion from last year’s P1.5 billion.

During the second quarter, the company logged 150 percent hike on volume of power sold; mainly due to higher dispatch of its hydro plants and the one month volume contribution from the Tiwi and MakBan plants.

“With the higher rainfall during the second quarter, the hydro power plants recorded 152 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in attributable energy sales for the months of April-June 2009,” the company noted.