TOYOTA Tsusho Corp. wants to increase its stake in Sarangani Energy Corp. (SEC), a unit of Alsons Consolidated Resources Inc. (ACR), the publicly listed company of the Alcantara group.
The trading arm of Japan’s Toyota Group holds a 25-percent stake in SEC, operator of the 210-megawatt (MW) coal plant in Maasim, Sarangani.
“They [Toyota Tsusho] want to go up to 35 percent. We are both studying it. They have expressed interest in expanding their equity position in our power company,” ACR Chairman Tomas Alcantara said.
Toyota Tsusho is in a hurry to acquire additional shares, but the Alsons group has yet to decide, Alcantara said. “SEC [section] 1 is finished. Pretty soon, we will have an equity call on SEC [section] 2. We have not made up our minds yet.”
If and when the Alsons Group accepts Toyota Tsusho’s offer, Alcantara said proceeds would go directly to finance the power project, particularly the second section of the SEC plant. “We raise capital only for identified and committed projects. We don’t want to be in the business of holding cash and then looking for projects,” he said.
SEC Section 1 began operating in April, providing 105 MW of much-needed additional baseload power to more than 3 million residents of Sarangani Province, General Santos City and other key areas of Mindanao in time to help ensure an ample and steady supply of electricity.
SEC Section 2, with another 105 MW of power, will begin construction this year, with commercial operation scheduled in 2018. When the coal plant reaches its full 210-MW capacity in 2018, SEC will be serving over 6 million people in key population areas in Mindanao.
The $570-million SEC power plant is the single largest investment in Sarangani Province and the entire Region 12.
ACR CFO Luis Ymson Jr. said SEC’s profit at end-2016 could reach P160 million, from the time it started commercial operation last month, “but that’s not the contribution to ACR because it only owns 75 percent, as Toyota owns the 25 percent.”
He said ACR may end the year with a double-digit growth in its earnings.
“ACR’s projected income in 2016 will grow double digit from 2015,” Ymson said.
In 2015 ACR’s net income attributable to the parent decreased to P189 million, from P359 million recorded in 2014. The drop was due to the nonrecurring expense caused by the depreciation of the Philippines peso, it said.
Without this, the figure would have been P406 million.
Its net income, meanwhile, fell to P691 million last year from P727 million a year ago.
Its electricity sales jumped by 15 percent to 1.4 billion MW hours (MWh) in 2015 from 1.2 billion MWh in 2014.
The group operates three-diesel power plants in Mindanao. These are the 103-MW plant in Iligan City operated by Mapalad Power Corp., 55-MW plant in Alabel, Sarangani under Southern Philippines Power Corp., and 100-MW plant in Zamboanga City under Western Mindanao Power Corp.
By 2019, ACR-affiliated power facilities will have around 588 MW of generating capacity, approximately 25 percent of Mindanao’s projected peak-power demand for that year.
