JG Summit core profit rises to P6.2 billion in 2022

MANILA, Philippines — Gokongwei-led JG Summit Holdings Inc. (JGS) said its core income grew two-fold in 2022 to P6.2 billion.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday, JG Summit president and CEO Lance Gokongwei said 2022 was the start of the company’s pivot back to growth with the reopening of the economy and the lifting of most mobility restrictions.

“We experienced a surge in consumption which drove the strong demand for our products and services across our food, real estate, and airline businesses. The demand was sustained throughout the year, this against the backdrop of significant inflation – with the volatility driven by the weaker peso and higher prices of oil and soft commodities,”Gokongwei said.

He said the company has been very proactive in addressing this issue with the objective of protecting and preserving our margins via carefully considered direct and indirect price adjustments, and the implementation of cost savings and productivity initiatives across our different business units.

“We continue to remain cautiously optimistic in 2023 given the lingering geopolitical and global economic risk. With inflation forecasted to slowly ease out on a sequential basis, we are hopeful that domestic consumption will remain buoyant while we expect to benefit from the reopening of China in our airline and petrochemicals businesses,” Gokongwei said.

However, incorporating the impact of the nine percent year on year devaluation of the peso on the group’s dollar-denominated debt, JGS consolidated full-year 2022 net income settled at P0.7 billion.

“This is lower than the reported 2021 net income of P5.1 billion, which had P6 billion of gains and contributions from its food manufacturing arm’s discontinued Oceania operations,”the company said.

Meanwhile, total revenues of the company grew by 36 percent to P312.4 billion, surpassing its pre-pandemic level.

“The agile efforts of its consumer-facing businesses delivered double-digit topline growth on the back of a reopening economy. Despite the margin pressures from unprecedented levels of fuel and commodity prices, such strong revenue performance plus the group’s cost-saving programs translated to significant profit improvements in most of its strategic business units,”the company said.

Universal Robina Corp., the company’s food business, registered a 28 percent increase to P149.9 billion in 2022, driven by double digit-growth in all its segments.

Similarly, Robinsons Land Corp. the company’s real estate and hotel business also posted a 22 percent increase in total revenues to P43.4 billion, driven by higher recognized residential sales, as well as the significant recovery in its malls and hotels as mobility restrictions were fully lifted in the latter half of the year.

JG Summit reported that Cebu Air, reported a 261 percent jump in systemwide revenues to P56.8 billion, fuelled by the post-pandemic travel demand.