Empresa Generadora de Electricidad ITABO, S.A.

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What it is

ITABO is a mixed public-private power company born from the Dominican state’s privatisation wave of the late 1990s, when state electricity assets were split up and opened to private capital. It owns 260 MW of installed coal-fired capacity at a coastal site roughly two kilometres west of the port of Haina, which includes its own international coal-unloading terminal.

It feeds the national interconnected electricity system (SENI) of the Dominican Republic. In 2024 the plant ran at an average availability of 85%, which kept it consistently among the three largest generators in the country.

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Who owns it

Grupo Linda, a Dominican agro-industrial conglomerate, holds exactly 50% of the shares; the Dominican state — through FONPER, the fund that holds the government’s stakes in reformed companies — owns 49.97%; and the remaining 0.03% is held by former employees of the old state electricity company, the CDE.

Grupo Linda consolidated its position by acquiring AES Dominicana’s stake in a share purchase agreement; the conglomerate is led by Félix García. Since April 2021, AES Dominicana has remained at the plant in a different role — running the day-to-day operations and maintenance under a management contract.

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Who runs it

Edwin De los Santos is the General Manager (CEO), a role he has held for seven years; he began his career at AES Dominicana in 2004 as Legal Vice-President after practising international commercial law and serving on the Dominican government’s free-trade negotiating team.

The board is chaired by Bernardo José Espínola Moya, with Gustavo Adolfo García Almánzar as Vice-Chairman and Ángel José Beato Leonardo as Secretary. Financial statements are audited by Deloitte RD, S.R.L.

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The money, in plain words

The most recent verified figures come from the PCR credit-rating report dated January 2024, covering the nine months to September 2023. Total assets at that date stood at US$341.3 million, down from US$399.7 million a year earlier — a fall largely explained by the ageing of plant and equipment.

Revenue from electricity sales fell 25.1% versus the prior year, because the long-term supply contracts (PPAs) with the state distribution companies expired in June 2023 and the company shifted more of its output to the short-term spot market. Despite that, operating cash generation (EBITDA) was US$30.7 million for the period, with interest costs of only US$2.2 million — meaning earnings covered interest charges 14.3 times, a very comfortable cushion.

For every dollar of owners’ equity, the company earned about 11.6 cents in that nine-month period — a return on equity (ROE) of 11.6%, below its own five-year average. Over the prior five years the average ROA was 11.5% and the average ROE was 18.3%, reflecting a structurally profitable business whose earnings have been temporarily dented by the contract reset.

In early 2022 the company refinanced its main bank loan by issuing two tranches of corporate bonds — US$20 million and US$40 million — at a fixed rate of 5.15% over ten years, shifting its debt to a longer, cheaper structure. The debt load is modest: total debt as a share of assets stands at 0.37 times — well under one, meaning assets comfortably exceed liabilities.

Full-year 2024 audited revenue and profit figures had not been published in any accessible source at the time of writing.

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What it is doing now

ITABO closed 2024 with an 85% plant availability rate, a strong operational number that placed it among the Dominican Republic’s top three generators for the year. The immediate commercial priority is renewing or replacing the PPA contracts with the state distributors that lapsed in mid-2023, which is the single largest variable in the company’s revenue outlook.

The company has set a target of contracting up to 30% of its generation capacity with unregulated industrial and commercial customers — a deliberate shift away from total reliance on the state distribution network.

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What to watch

• PPA renewal: Whether and on what terms ITABO re-signs long-term supply deals with the state distributors will determine revenue visibility for years ahead.
• Coal-price pass-through: The plant’s costs move directly with international coal prices; a sustained rise squeezes margins unless contracts allow pass-through.
• Ownership evolution: Grupo Linda now controls the private half of the company and leads strategy; how that relationship with the AES management contract evolves bears watching.
• Energy transition: The Dominican Republic has renewable-energy targets. A coal-dependent generator faces longer-term regulatory and reputational pressure to diversify its fuel mix.
• Single-site concentration: All generation assets sit at one location in Bajos de Haina, leaving the company exposed to hurricane damage or a single operational failure — a risk the credit agency flags explicitly.

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This is news, not investment advice.