Pacific Lighting Earnings Fall $28 Million in ’84

Writing off $60 million in costs related to an abandoned project to build a liquefied natural gas terminal at Point Conception caused a $28.98-million drop in 1984 earnings for Pacific Lighting Corp., parent of Southern California Gas Co, the company said Tuesday.

Los Angeles-based Pacific Lighting earned $138.57 million in 1984 on operating revenues of $4.78 billion. That was down from 1983 earnings of $167.55 million on revenue of $4.59 billion. But 1984’s fourth-quarter earnings increased to $45.3 million on revenue of $1.35 billion, compared to the $43.79 million it earned on revenue of $1.2 billion for the same quarter a year earlier.

“All lines of business were profitable, both for the fourth quarter of 1984 and for the year,” Pacific Lighting’s chairman, Paul A. Miller, said in a statement.

The Public Utilities Commission last fall allowed Pacific Lighting’s gas utility subsidiaries to recover $88 million of their costs in the proposed LNG terminal but ruled that another $60 million in costs should be borne by shareholders. Pacific Lighting took that one-time write-off in its third quarter, which resulted in a $13.4-million loss.

At the time the write-off was announced last Sept. 7, the company estimated that it would trim earnings by $1.80 a share. The actual reduction will amount to $1.63, Miller said, due to an increase in the weighted average number of shares outstanding between the third quarter and the fourth, resulting mainly from acquiring Presley Cos., a Newport Beach real estate developer. Presley shareholders approved the takeover by Pacific Lighting last month.