Major conglomerates on Friday reported improved profits in the third quarter from the second quarter as the government eased mobility and quarantine restrictions to help the economy recover from the impact of the pandemic.
JG Summit Holdings Inc. of the Gokongwei Group said third-quarter earnings reached P844 million, a turnaround from the P720-million net loss it booked in the first two quarters of the year.
Alliance Global Group Inc. of tycoon Andrew Tan reported a net income of P2.2 billion in the third quarter, a 14-fold increase from the P156-million profit in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, LT Group Inc. of tycoon Lucio Tan became the first conglomerate to register higher profit this year from 2019. LT Group registered a net income of P16.1 billion in the first nine months, up 9 percent from P14.72 billion in the same period last year on strong results from tobacco and liquor businesses.
JG Summit said the higher third-quarter profit was due to improving contributions from petrochemical and real estate businesses coupled with reduced losses from air transport.
“The business continues to face challenges brought about by COVID, but I am encouraged by our results in the third quarter. With the easing of restrictions, economic activity has slowly returned and our different business units showed some quarter on quarter recovery but I also note that these results are far from ideal and still showed steep declines versus a year ago. Weaker consumer sentiment will continue to affect demand for products and services in the near term thus we remain cautiously optimistic,” JG Summit president and chief executive Lance Gokongwei said.
“We will, however, focus on execution to build on and continue the momentum that has started in Q3. The prospects of a vaccine likewise give us hope that this will unlock further acceleration and recovery towards the latter part of 2021,” Gokongwei said.
JG Summit’s net income plunged by 99 percent in the first nine months to P124 million from P21 billion a year ago.
AGI’s third-quarter consolidated revenues jumped 30 percent to P30.4 billion from the second quarter.
“We are very encouraged by the sharp improvement in earnings across all our business segments during the third quarter as the economy gets a reboot with the further easing of the quarantine restrictions. Our interim performance also validated the soundness of our diversification strategy as evidenced by the strong results delivered by our international liquor operations even amidst the global pandemic,” said AGI chief executive Kevin Tan.
“We are optimistic that we can maintain this sequential improvement following the trajectory of the economy which we expect to slowly improve,” Tan said.
AGI’s liquor business under Emperador Inc. posted strong growth despite the pandemic, but its property, casino and quick service restaurant businesses continued to be affected by the pandemic.
LT Group, on its part, said tobacco business accounted for P12.12 billion or 75 percent of total attributable net income in the first nine months, followed by banking unit Philippine National Bank which contributed P2.24 billion or 14 percent.
Tanduay Distillers Inc. added P1.09 billion, accounting for seven percent of total net income while property arm Eton Properties Philippines Inc. contributed P630 million.
LT Group said the P12.17-billion net income of its tobacco unit was 27 percent higher than the same period last year. The increase in its net income was due to higher sales of its premium and mid-priced cigarette brands and the price increases implemented in late August 2019 to pass on higher excise taxes.
PNB’s P4 billion net profit in the first nine-months of the year was down 39 percent from a year ago. The lower net income was due to the P9.03-billion provision for credit losses that the bank booked due to the pandemic.