Roxas Holdings widens net loss in Q1

Listed sugar and bio-energy company Roxas Holdings Inc. (RHI) has widened its net loss for the first quarter of the current crop year due to lower sugar prices.

In a disclosure to the local bourse, RHI said net loss for the September to November 2018 period reached P197 million or a more than six-fold increase from the P30 million loss reported during the previous crop year.

The company incurred higher losses even as consolidated revenues more than doubled to P2.27 billion due to an increase in raw sugar sales.

RHI chairman Pedro Roxas said the company’s first quarter performance is historically slow as off-season repair and maintenance activities for the alcohol plants and the sugar refinery are done then, with only the sugar mill in Negros starting operations in September.

“We expect operations to start picking up in the next two quarters. We inaugurated the two anaerobic digesters at San Carlos Bioenergy Inc. and we anticipate to see the full benefits from these facilities in the succeeding quarters,” he said.

The company’s sugar business was also affected by the decline of sugar prices in reaction to the heightened calls of food firms for the government to allow the importation of sugar, and the lower yield primarily due to changing weather conditions.

“Sugar prices dropped significantly in reaction to the increasing clamor of food firms for the government to allow them to import sugar,” RHI president and chief executive officer Hubert Tubio said.

The company’s ethanol businesses Roxol Bioenergy Corp. and San Carlos Bioenergy Corp. Inc. are the country’s biggest ethanol producers with a combined capacity of 285,000 liters per day.

RHI is the largest integrated sugar business in the Philippines which manages 100 percent of Central Azucarera Don Pedro in Batangas, and Central Azucarera de la Carlota, RCB and majority of SCBI.