ACEN Sold Investors a Clean-Energy Future. Its Coal Ties Never Fully Disappeared.
The Philippine power producer divested its interest in a 246-megawatt coal plant, but retained commercial control of the facility’s output and continues to report electricity revenue without a fuel-by-fuel breakdown.
The Philippine power producer divested its interest in a 246-megawatt coal plant, but retained commercial control of the facility’s output and continues to report electricity revenue without a fuel-by-fuel breakdown.
At the height of the renewable-energy boom in 2021, investors placed an extraordinary value on ACEN Corp.’s promise to become one of Southeast Asia’s leading clean-power companies.
Shares of the Ayala-controlled electricity producer climbed from below ₱2 before the boom to roughly ₱12 at their late-2021 peak, according to the company’s long-term trading chart. The ascent coincided with aggressive renewable-energy expansion and investor enthusiasm for companies positioned to benefit from the global shift away from fossil fuels. ACEN’s 2021 results presentation emphasized growth from new renewable projects, with revenue rising 27% to ₱26.1 billion and operating capacity expanding sharply.
Yet ACEN’s Philippine business at the time retained a substantial connection to coal through South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp., or SLTEC, operator of a two-unit coal station in Calaca, Batangas.
SLTEC’s plant has 270 megawatts of installed capacity, consisting of two 135-megawatt circulating fluidized-bed units. ACEN generally describes the station as having 246 megawatts of net dependable capacity, after accounting for auxiliary use and operating limitations. The plant has historically produced as much as approximately 1,800 gigawatt-hours of net electricity in a year, according to ACEN’s own energy-transition materials.
Today, ACEN’s shares trade at about ₱2.70, close to the range from which the clean-energy rally began and approximately 78% below the 2021 peak visible in the long-term chart. The stock’s verified 52-week range through early September 2026 was ₱2.15 to ₱3.53.
The collapse doesn’t prove that coal caused ACEN’s devaluation. Rising interest rates, capital requirements, project execution, weaker earnings delivery, equity dilution and changing investor enthusiasm for renewable developers can all influence valuation.
But the stock’s round trip has revived a question that has followed ACEN through its transition: How much of the company’s commercial electricity business still depends on coal?
A divestment that preserved control
ACEN says it eliminated coal ownership in November 2022 through what it called the world’s first market-based Energy Transition Mechanism transaction.
The ₱17.4 billion transaction included ₱13.7 billion in debt financing from Bank of the Philippine Islands and Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., along with ₱3.7 billion in investments from the Government Service Insurance System, Insular Life, and ETM Philippines Holdings. ACEN received ₱7.2 billion in proceeds for reinvestment in renewable-energy projects.
The company committed to retire SLTEC by 2040, potentially shortening the coal station’s life by 15 to 25 years. ACEN presents the transaction as evidence that a coal asset can be financed toward early retirement while its former owner redirects capital into clean power.
The divestment, however, didn’t end ACEN’s operating relationship with the plant.
As part of the structure, ACEN and SLTEC entered into an Administration and Management Agreement covering the plant’s entire capacity, as well as a separate operations-and-maintenance agreement. The arrangements gave ACEN administration, control, and commercial management of SLTEC’s output even after ACEN disposed of its equity interest.
Under the arrangement described in ACEN’s June 2026 quarterly filing, the company can purchase SLTEC electricity and resell it through its portfolio, including to bilateral customers or the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market. ACEN also remains obligated to ensure that SLTEC recovers operating expenses, capital expenditures, debt-service requirements, and agreed investor returns. If SLTEC’s market receipts fall short, ACEN must settle the difference.
The result is an unusual division between legal ownership and economic exposure. ACEN can say that it no longer owns a coal plant. At the same time, the company continues to administer that plant’s full generating capacity, influence the commercial disposition of its output, and bear contractual risk when plant revenue is inadequate.
Coal power still moves through the portfolio
SLTEC historically helped support ACEN’s electricity contracts, including former agreements with Manila Electric Co., or Meralco. ACEN secured a 200-megawatt baseload agreement and a 110-megawatt mid-merit agreement with Meralco, supply arrangements tied to the company’s thermal and purchased-power portfolio.
Those contracts were terminated effective November 2024. But their financial effects remain visible.
In January 2026, the Energy Regulatory Commission approved ₱1.74899 billion of price adjustments arising from extraordinary coal-price increases in 2022 and 2023. ACEN said the recovery, collected through Meralco generation charges beginning in March 2026, had a significant positive effect on pretax earnings.
That amount wasn’t revenue from electricity newly generated in 2026. It was a recovery connected to coal costs incurred under earlier contracts. Still, its appearance in current results shows how coal economics can remain in the accounts years after the underlying supply arrangement ends.
ACEN also continued purchasing electricity from SLTEC in 2026, although at a lower level. Under a revised trading strategy, uncontracted SLTEC generation could instead be sold directly by SLTEC to WESM when spot prices were below the plant’s cost of supply. ACEN said the direct-sale route reduced transaction friction.
The change affects how investors see coal’s contribution. When ACEN buys SLTEC electricity and resells it, ACEN may record gross electricity revenue and a corresponding purchased-power cost. When SLTEC sells directly into WESM, the gross sale may remain in SLTEC rather than flowing through ACEN’s consolidated revenue, while ACEN retains the contractual consequences of any shortfall.
Coal exposure can therefore migrate between revenue, purchased-power expense and contractual settlement accounts without appearing under a single line labeled “SLTEC.”
The missing fuel-by-fuel ledger
For the six months ended June 30, 2026, ACEN reported ₱22.512 billion in revenue from the sale of electricity. Of that amount, ₱20.131 billion came from the Philippines, ₱2.312 billion from Australia and ₱68.9 million from the ACEN Investments segment.
The company divided electricity revenue into two accounting classes:
₱13.562 billion from power-supply contracts; and
₱8.950 billion from power generation and trading.
What the filing didn’t provide was a breakdown by generation source.
Investors weren’t told how much revenue was economically supported by:
solar;
wind;
geothermal;
hydro;
natural gas;
diesel;
coal;
batteries;
third-party purchases; or
WESM balancing transactions.
That omission doesn’t violate the segment presentation in the financial statements. ACEN’s operating segments are organized geographically and commercially, and accounting standards don’t necessarily require electricity revenue to be separated by fuel.
Still, the limitation matters for a company whose valuation case rests heavily on renewable growth and energy transition.
ACEN’s Philippine segment includes renewable generation, thermal operations, retail electricity supply, project development and related activities. The same segment contains electricity generated by ACEN facilities, electricity purchased from other generators, and electricity resold to customers. As a result, investors can’t determine from the reported revenue line alone whether a peso came from a solar farm, a wind turbine, a geothermal contract, or coal-fired electricity purchased from SLTEC.
There is no public evidence establishing that ACEN avoids a fuel-by-fuel revenue breakdown because it fears revealing a substantial coal contribution. The nondisclosure could also reflect portfolio accounting, commercial confidentiality, the difficulty of matching retail sales to individual generating sources, and the fungible nature of electricity on the grid.
But the absence of the breakdown prevents investors from independently testing the alternative proposition.
The economics may matter more than ownership
ACEN now describes itself as a leading renewable-energy platform. The Philippine Stock Exchange’s company profile says ACEN achieved 100% renewable-energy generation in 2025, while ACEN’s website highlights approximately 7 gigawatts of attributable renewable capacity across the Philippines and international markets.
That claim can coexist with continuing coal-linked commerce because “renewable-energy generation” may refer to electricity generated by ACEN’s owned or attributable portfolio. It doesn’t necessarily describe all electricity purchased, administered, traded or resold by ACEN’s Philippine supply business.
ACEN recorded ₱11.779 billion of purchased-power cost in the first half of 2026, compared with only ₱2.7 million of directly reported fuel cost. Those figures demonstrate that much of the Philippine business operates as a portfolio supplier and electricity trader, buying power rather than simply generating it inside consolidated subsidiaries.
The filing identifies SLTEC, under the administration agreement, as part of ACEN’s continuing exposure to coal and fuel-price risk. It also states that ACEN remains responsible for ensuring recovery of SLTEC’s costs, debt service, and investor returns.
In substance, ACEN has removed SLTEC from its equity-ownership column without fully removing the plant from its commercial ecosystem.
Estimating the coal footprint
SLTEC’s physical scale makes the unanswered question material. At 246 megawatts of net dependable capacity, the plant could produce roughly 750 to 960 gigawatt-hours over six months at capacity factors between 70% and 90%.
At ACEN’s cited H1 2026 average WESM price of about ₱4.90 per kilowatt-hour, that output would have a gross market value of roughly ₱3.7 billion to ₱4.7 billion. Actual realized revenue would depend on dispatch, availability, hourly prices, bilateral commitments, and whether electricity was sold by SLTEC or bought and resold by ACEN.
Adding the ₱1.749 billion historical Meralco coal adjustment to current SLTEC purchases could make coal-linked activity one of ACEN’s largest single-asset revenue influences for H1 2026. But investors can’t verify the amount from the published accounts because ACEN doesn’t disclose SLTEC volumes purchased by ACEN, realized resale prices, or revenue by fuel.
It would be misleading to conclude that all SLTEC gross sales belong to ACEN. Some output is sold directly by SLTEC, and SLTEC is no longer consolidated as an ACEN-owned coal subsidiary. It would be equally incomplete, however, to conclude that ACEN has no coal business merely because it sold the shares.
A valuation haunted by uncertainty
The market’s reassessment of ACEN since 2021 reflects more than coal. Renewable developers around the world have faced higher financing costs, construction inflation, transmission constraints and investor demands for cash earnings rather than distant capacity targets. ACEN’s international expansion has also increased debt, execution demands and the complexity of its financial results.
The company reported improved results in H1 2026, including 4,024 gigawatt-hours of attributable renewable generation and ₱3.9 billion in consolidated net income. Australian solar output grew, Philippine wind availability recovered, and the retail electricity business expanded.
Yet the share price remains close to its pre-boom level. The market no longer grants ACEN the valuation it commanded when renewable ambition itself was enough to attract capital.
For investors trying to decide whether the company deserves a clean-energy premium, capacity figures may no longer be sufficient. They need to know what actually earns the revenue.
A fuel-by-fuel disclosure could show that coal is now immaterial. It could also reveal that coal-linked electricity and legacy adjustments remain significant to Philippine revenue and earnings. Either result would give investors information they don’t currently have.
Until then, SLTEC occupies an ambiguous place in ACEN’s story: divested but administered, scheduled for retirement but still operating, excluded from renewable-generation claims but connected to the company’s electricity portfolio and contractual obligations.
ACEN has exorcised coal from its ownership structure. It has not yet demonstrated, in a revenue table investors can audit, that it has exorcised coal from the economics of its business.
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Disclaimer: This is for informational purposes and is not investment advice. Figures come from company disclosures and exchange data; valuation ratios reflect the author’s calculations based on cited inputs.