CONGLOMERATE Metro Pacific Investments Corp. on Thursday said it is increasing its capital expenditures (capex) for the year to P58.2 billion to take on its investments in the Light Rail Transit (LRT) 1 construction that takes the current line to Cavite.
The company officials said the figure was P3.5 billion higher than it previously announced. The additional investments will mainly go to the initial construction of LRT 1, which expands the line from Baclaran in Pasay to Bacoor in Cavite.
Including all the investments of companies controlled or partly owned by the First Pacific Group, which include those of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., total investments will increase to P101.2 billion, Jose Ma. Lim, MPIC president and CEO, said during the company’s briefing.
MPIC’s unit, Metro Pacific Light Rail Corp., owns some 55 percent of Light Rail Manila Consortium, which earlier won the bidding for the P64.9-billion LRT 1 Cavite Extension.
AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp. holds a 35-percent stake in the consortium, while Macquarie Infrastructure Holdings (Philippines) Inc. owns the remaining 10 percent.
Total initial spending of MPIC to the said project will amount to about P9 billion, Lim said.
MPIC also said its consolidated core net income last year rose to 18 percent, to P8.5 billion from the previous year’s P7.2 billion, mainly due to robust earnings growth of its tollways arm and growth of its higher volumes of water and electricity sales.
The company said water billed volume grew 4 percent and also a 4-percent increase in effective tariff.
Profit from Maynilad Water Services Inc. grew 15 percent to P4.37 billion from last year, while income from power distributor Manila Electric Co. grew 30 percent, to P3.02 billion from last year’s P2.33 billion, partly as a result of a 3-percent hike in energy sales.
Income from Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPIC) rose 19 percent to P2.24 billion, as a result of a 7-percent hike in average daily traffic and also the contribution of Thailand’s Don Muang Tollways.
Meanwhile, income of the hospitals group dropped by 20 percent, to P465 million from P581 million, as a result of the lower stake of the MPIC group in its hospital arm.
Last year Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC or Government of Singapore Investment Corp. invested P3.7 billion for a 14.4-percent stake in Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc. It also made an advance of P6.5 billion in exchangeable bond with MPIC, which can be exchanged into a 25.5-percent stake in the hospitals group.
“We anticipate continued strong volume growth in 2015 for all our subsidiaries in light of anticipated continuing economic growth.
In the face of this favorable prospect, a number of our businesses are facing overdue tariff adjustments—particularly our water and toll-road operations where, if left unresolved, continued capital expenditure on water projects and road construction would be degraded.
Given these uncertainties, we are, at this time, unable to give earnings guidance for 2015,” Lim said.