STI starts school expansion, sees student pop at 100T by 2015

MANILA, Philippines - Listed education firm STI Education Systems Holdings Inc. has jumpstarted its plan to boost its student population to 100,000 by 2015.

In a regulatory filing, STI Holdings said it started the expansion program “which involves the acquisition of new properties for the expansion and upgrade of existing schools.”

STI Holdings is currently constructing a new STI Academic Center in a sprawling four-hectare property in Ortigas-Cainta that will house a new campus for 5,000 students and a new head office.

The new facility is located at the corner of ROTC Road and Ortigas Avenue Extension in Cainta.

STI Holdings said it also acquired the former site of the Philippine National Railways Hospital in Caloocan.

“The 15,000 square-meter (sqm) property located at the corner of Samson and Caimito Roads will be the site of the future STI Caloocan Academic Center,” the company said.

Outside of Manila, STI Holdings will also put up the 2,000-sqm. STI College Cebu near the Ayala Center in Cebu City.

“The company also plans to put up new academic centers in Las Piñas, Cubao, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Calamba, and Lucena within the next two years,” STI Holdings said.

All the expansion program is expected to boost enrolment to as much as 100,000 students in 2015, it added.

In the April to December period last year, STI Holdings’ student population rose to 68,363 from 66,740 a year ago, resulting in increased revenues from tuition and other school fees.

To date, the company has 85 schools nationwide, of which 55 are franchised and 30 are company-owned. It has 67,361 students for STI alone and 72,000 including other affiliate schools Philippine Women’s University (PWU) and iAcademy.

STI allotted P1.528 billion for capital expenditures this year and P2.39 billion for 2014.

In the first nine months last year, profits of STI Holdings more than doubled to P578.74 million from P219.32 million a year earlier as revenues climbed nearly 10 percent to P1.21 billion.

In November, STI Holdings raised P2.36 billion through a follow-on offering. Businessman Eusebio Tanco consolidated all his education assets – the STI chain of schools, a 40 percent stake in PWU and iAcademy - under STI Holdings, formerly holding firm JTH Davies.

Also injected into STI Holdings is a 20 percent interest in STI Investments, which holds Tanco’s strategic investment in PhilPlans, a leading pre-need savings program with plans dedicated to education, and PhilCare.