Conglomerate JG Summit Holdings Inc. said Friday it budgeted P47.8 billion for 2021 capital expenditures to support the expansion of property, food manufacturing and petrochemical businesses.
JG Summit president and chief executive Lance Gokongwei said during the company’s annual stockholders meeting P20 billion was allocated to fund real estate projects of Robinsons Land Corp., while P10 billion would go to food manufacturing unit Universal Robina Corp.
Petrochemical unit JG Summit Petrochemicals Group will spend P13 billion this year as it is in the process of completing a $1.3-billion expansion project. Airline unit Cebu Air Inc. will spend P3 billion this year.
The conglomerate said net income in the first three months reached P122 million, significantly lower than P1.9 billion it earned in the same period last year as its airline and real estate businesses continued to be affected by the pandemic.
Excluding airline operations, JGS Summit’s first-quarter net income amounted to P5.1 billion, up 88 percent year-on-year. Consolidated revenues were nearly flat at P67.6 billion.
“We continue to cautiously navigate this very turbulent environment leveraging on the strengths of our diversified portfolio and our balance sheet. Our food and banking segments remain stable, while businesses that were heavily impacted by the strict mobility restrictions and quarantine measures have shown sustained quarter-on-quarter recovery since the significant decline during the ECQ last year,” Gokongwei said.
“We are also pleased to see substantial EBITDA contribution from our petrochemicals unit with the constant improvement in its operations in the recent quarter,” he said.
Gokongwei said overall recovery would vary across industries in its portfolio, depending on the vaccine rollout.
“For the balance of this year, we will continue to focus on the execution of our recovery game plan. We believe that the group is well positioned to answer the shift in consumers’ needs and behaviors as well as the lasting shift to digital channels in a post COVID world,” Gokongwei said.