House of Investments [HI 3.44 8.5%] [link] and its consortium signed the joint venture development agreement with the Provincial Government of Cavite for the construction of the Sangley Point International Airport (SPIA) project. The consortium consists of domestic and international companies, with the local components being HI (Yuchengco Family), Cavitex Holdings, and MacroAsia [MAC 5.19 0.2%] (Lucio Tan). The SPIA will cost P602 billion to build, and will be ready for operations by 2028 according to the provincial government.
MB Quick Take: It’s great to see this project finally take real steps forward. NAIA is obviously too old, too small, and too politically “hot” to do anything about, so the future development of the NCR and the surrounding areas will need to be supported by infrastructure projects like this and the airport in Bulacan that is being pushed by San Miguel [SMC 116.40].
BPI [BPI 108.00 2.2%] [link] was fined P134 million by the SEC for failing to get the SEC’s “confirmation” that its executive stock purchase plan and stock option plan were exempted from registration with the SEC. BPI said that the mistake was a “bona fide error”.
MB Quick Take: The market is like a message forum; it gets better with effective moderation. This fine isn’t going to cause BPI to lose sleep, and to demonstrate why, let’s just say that the fine represents about 29 hours’ worth of BPI’s net income in FY22. Now I’d like the SEC to apply some of this rigor to the suspicious pump problem that has flared up in the past month!
Robinsons Land [RLC 16.10 2.3%] [link] subsidiary, Robinsons Logistix and Industrials (RLX), said that it would look to double its warehouse gross leasable area “in the next couple of years” to be a “key partner” in the growth of e-commerce in SE Asia. RLX said that the warehouse segment is “now one of the fastest growing segments of RLC”.
MB Quick Take: RLX isn’t just doing the dry warehouse expansion that is so quick and easy, it’s doing temperature-controlled warehousing and cold storage as well, which takes more time and is more complicated to build, maintain, and operate. This kind of warehouse and cold storage capacity growth will be important to the country’s food security, and to the continued growth of sales for the band of products and services that are aimed at the (growing) middle class.
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