Jollibee implements employees’ stock plan

Jollibee Foods Corp., (JFC) is implementing the second phase of its stock option plan for employees with roughly P220 million worth of common Treasury shares allocated for the purpose, the company informed the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday.

Under the plan, employees of JFC or any of its strategic business units who have participated and completed the full payment of subscribed JFC shares under the Tandem Stock Purchase and Option Plan (TSPOP) last March 15, 2001 are qualified to avail themselves of two additional shares for every share purchased and fully paid.

JFC has reserved and allotted 22,091,042 common Treasury shares for the stock option availment. It has over 60 million outstanding Treasury shares while its outstanding common shares total 957.126 million.

The price for each share under the stock option plan shall be the same as the purchase price the employee availed of under the TSPOP. In 1998, this amounted to P12 per share; in 1999, P11.75; and last year, P10.65. A participant can only exercise his/her stock option once in a given year based on the cut off anniversary dates.

The employee can exercise up to a maximum of one third of the total stock options every anniversary date for the next three years.

There are two ways by which an employee can exercise the stock option: 1) exercise and hold, wherein the employee pays all shares purchased in cash and holds the common shares until such time he/she decides to sell the shares, and 2) exercise and sell, wherein the employee subscribes to the share allotment and authorizes the company to sell the shares on his/her behalf at a price stated in the exercise notice. In this case, the employee does not have to shell out cash to pay for the shares purchased. Instead, he/she will receive the cash proceeds net of the purchase price and transaction cost related to the sale, although the company does not warrant the period within which the shares may be sold at the designated price since this depends of market conditions and regulatory approvals.

In the first three months of this year, JFC made a turnaround on its income performance as its net profit improved by 4.2 percent to P216.6 million, as against a five-percent reduction in the same period last year.

JFC boosted sales by 23.7 percent to P4.07 billion during the period, despite the sluggish economic environment, as it eventually reaped the benefits of integrating the operations of Oriental fastfood chain Chowking.

Last year, the Jollibee group completed the fold-in of Chowking Foods to increase its total network to 787 outlets at end-March 2001. These include 384 Jollibee outlets, 152 Greenwhich Pizza stores, 170 Chowking chains and 15 Delifrance bakery units.

In addition, there are 20 Jollibee and six Chowking stores in different places abroad.

With the ingegration of Chowking, JFC’s systemwide sales improved tremendously, fortifying the group’s hold as the country’s largest fast food network accounting for over half of the market share in their respective segments.