The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Riza Lozada
Conglomerate Ayala Group has earmarked P174 billion for its capital expenditures this year mainly to support real-estate and telecommunications businesses and yield sustained growth as it reported a 20-percent surge in profit to P22.3 billion last year.
The company exceeded its target profit growth a year earlier than planned which was largely boosted by contributions from its power generation unit.
“We achieved a number of milestones as a group in the past year, with most of our major businesses continuing to perform well,” Ayala Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Fernando Zobel de Ayala said.
“In 2015, we strengthened our growing portfolio of power and infrastructure investments, with various projects coming to fruition. In addition, we increased our investments in social infrastructure, as we entered the healthcare space and deepened our presence in education,” he added.
The sustained performance of its residential and office developments and commercial leasing segments drove
Ayala Land’s net income in 2015, which reached P17.6 billion, to go up 19 percent year-on-year. Ayala Land Inc. continued to build up its recurring income business, with malls, office, and hotels and resorts accounting for 34 percent of its net earnings in 2015.
It has earmarked P85 billion to support its pipeline of projects this year, slightly higher than previous year’s P82 billion. Globe Telecom posted another record year, with net income surging 23 percent to P16.5 billion, buoyed by the solid revenue trajectory from demand for data ser-vices across mobile, broad-band and fixed line segments.
Bank of the Philippine Is-lands reported net earnings of P18.2 billion in 2015, up 1.1 percent, as the bank’s core lending business continued to drive growth, reducing re-liance in securities trading.
As it ramps up its busi-nesses outside Metro Manila, Manila Water posted a 2-per-cent growth in consolidat-ed net income to P6 billion.
Integrated Micro-Elec-tronics Inc. reported a flat net income of $28.8 million year-onyear, owing to the volatility in the foreign currency markets and weakness in China’s econ-omy, one of its largest markets.
Ayala said enhanced portfolio mix and cost ef-ficiency initiatives across IMI’s operations covered for the softness in revenues.
AC Energy Holdings re-corded a net income of P2.1 billion during the year, as its power generation assets came online and achieved more efficient operating levels.
It also realized gains from the partial sale of its stake in North Luzon Renewable En-ergy Corp., an 81-megawatt wind farm in Ilocos Norte.
Excluding capital gains primarily from the partial sale of AC Energy’s stake in North Luzon Renewable Energy Corp. in 2015 and from the divestment of Stream Global Services in the previous year, Ayala’s net earnings actually grew 24 percent year-on-year.
AC Energy currently has an attributable capacity of about 600 megawatts (MW) in its portfolio among conven-tional and renewable power projects currently in opera-tions and under construction.
It expects this capacity to reach close to 1,000 MW by 2016 once the first phase of its 2×660 GN Power plant in Din-ginin, reaches financial close.
“In transport infrastruc-ture, we opened the Muntin-lupa- Cavite Expressway, launched the Beep ticket-ing system, and took over the operations and manage-ment of LRT1,” Zobel said.
Its automated fare collec-tion system under AF Payments, Inc. now has over 1.5 million Beep cards in circulation today.
Meanwhile, AC Infra’s Muntinlupa Cavite Express-way (MCX) started opera-tions last July and is cur-rently serving over 22,000 vehicles per day, helping motorists save over 30 min-utes in travel time.