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ABOITIZ Power Corp. (APC) and Vivant Energy Corp.
have acquired majority of the shares in one of Cebu’s largest
power plants.
In a disclosures to the
Philippine Stock Exchange, APC, a wholly owned unit of Aboitiz
Equity Ventures Inc., said it has acquired approximately 48 percent
of the total outstanding shares of Cebu Private Power Corp. (CPPC)
from East Asia Utilities Corp. for P176 million.
Vivant Energy, a subsidiary of
Cebu-based Vivant Corp., separately announced it has acquired 32
percent of the total outstanding capital stock of CPPC for P117.5
million from the same company.
CPPC owns and operates a 70-mw
thermal plant in Cebu City, under a Build-Operate-Transfer contract
to supply 62 mw of power to Visayan Electric Company Inc. (VECO), an
Aboitiz family-led distributor.
APC said the transaction was
forged in order to secure CPPC’s facility, which is “too vital
to VECO’s operations to risk another change in ownership.”
The power plant not only supplies
energy at critical peak periods but also stabilizes voltage for the
VECO franchise and, to a large extent, for the Cebu-Negros-Panay
grid, since Cebu has the largest demand for power in the area.
However, since it entered into a
contract to supply power to VECO in 1998, CPPC has gone through
several changes in ownership and several contract disputes, twice
threatening to stop operations.
Under its BOT contract, the CPPC
plant will revert to VECO in November 2013.
The plant forms part of local
generation assets acquired by the Avenue Capital Group, the ultimate
owner of El Paso Philippines Energy Company, Inc. (EPPECI), from
Globeleq Asia Holdings Ltd. after Globeleq bought out the generation
assets of Texas-based El Paso Global Power in India, Indonesia and
the Philippines.
On top of this, APC also
announced it has bought 50,000,000 common shares representing 50
percent of the outstanding capital stock of East Asia from EPPECI
for about P131 million.
East Asia Utilities operates a
50-mw thermal plant that has been the sole provider of power to the
Mactan Export Processing Zone I in Mactan Island, Cebu, since 1997.
The Aboitiz group’s power unit
stands to assume about P878 million of intercompany debt owed to
East Asia.
 --Euan
Paulo C. Añonuevo
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