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BEL Makes Major Comeback with $18.7 M Profit
posted (June 20, 2014)
Last night, BEL held its Annual General Meeting to report to their shareholders about financial year which ended on December 31, 2013. The important news coming out of the meeting is that the company turned a net profit of 18.7 million dollars - the best performance in years and a major rebound from last year's loss of 16 million dollars. The turnaround is due mostly to lower cost of financing, and lower cost of power.

The media was locked out of the AGM, so today, we sat down with one of the Senior Managers of the company to understand what this positive developments mean for you, the consumer. Here's what she told us:

Daniel Ortiz
"The company made a net earnings of 18.7 million dollars which is the best in 5 years. Tell us what accounted for this profit?"

Betty Tam - Senior Mngr. Finance & HR, BEL
"Basically, first of all we had increase in rates which we got because we had to compensate for the high cost of power in 2012. We also had a 5% increase in sales and then besides that cost of power was basically in our favor in 2013 because we had better rains and that decrease cost of power by 8%."

Daniel Ortiz
"We also know that you guys had a reduction in unit operating cost by 26%. What caused it that the company could reduce by so much?"

Betty Tam - Senior Mngr. Finance & HR, BEL
"That 26% was over 3 years since 2010 and the reason being is that our cost of power have decreased this year. We have an increase of sales over the past 3 years since 2010."

Daniel Ortiz
"Does this transfer over to the customers? Do they get any sort of benefit from this in terms of like rate reduction?"

Betty Tam - Senior Mngr. Finance & HR, BEL
"The profits would passed ion to the customers. One of the reasons why we have that amount of high profits its translates into the reduce cost of power, so in future rates the rates would reduce to compensate for that for customers."

BEL is reporting that it gained 2,000 customers last year.

It was announced last night that the shareholders will be paid a dividend of $5.6 million dollars - a 60% increase over the previous year.

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