LISTED holding company Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc. (AEV) will be launching a new data innovation unit, which will have a dual role “as a service provider and governance center” for the company.
“By embracing data science and artificial intelligence or DSAI, we open up to new and bigger opportunities to accelerate our productivity, drive business value, and generate new revenue streams,” Sabin M. Aboitiz, president and chief executive officer of AEV, said during the company’s virtual stockholders’ meeting on Monday.
The new subsidiary will be named Aboitiz Data Innovation and will be under AEV International.
“It will consolidate the One Aboitiz DSAI operating model across the group,” Mr. Aboitiz said.
The unit is expected to support the company’s business models and decision making capabilities.
Meanwhile, the first unit of GNPower Dinginin Ltd. Co. is expected to start commercial operations by August or early September.
AEV’s Aboitiz Power Corp. subsidiary Therma Power, Inc. entered a joint venture with AC Energy Corp. and Power Partners Ltd. Co. for two units.
“It’s on outage for fine-tuning and we expect to be synchronized again and be able to evacuate 668 megawatts allowed by ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission) by next week. We expect this to run until June for the last fine-tuning until we do the performance test and, hopefully, declare commercial operations by August or early September depending on the performance test,” AboitizPower President and Chief Executive Officer Emmanuel V. Rubio said during the company’s stockholders’ meeting.
Meanwhile, the company said it is pressing on with its plans for Unit 2 despite the pandemic.
“We expect Unit 2 to be declared [set for] COD (commercial operation date) by late first quarter or probably early second quarter of 2022,” Mr. Rubio said.
AEV shares at the stock exchange on Monday declined by 2.16% or 0.75 to close at P34.05 apiece, while stocks of AboitizPower closed unchanged at P22.75. — Keren Concepcion G. Valmonte
