Ayala Land set to expand hotel, mall operations

Property giant Ayala Land Inc. has mapped out plans to build 6,000 hotel rooms and breach the 3-million square meter mark in shopping mall footprint nationwide to support an aggressive medium-term program called “Vision 2020.”

The plan seeks to grow annual business by about 20 percent a year from 2015 to 2020, culminating in an annual net profit exceeding P40 billion by the year 2020. Half of the profit will come from development assets such as residential property development and the balance from the leasing portfolio, including the shopping mall and office property operations.

“Our presence across the Philippines, with 18 established estates and a landbank of 8,948 hectares, enables us to take advantage of the growth of consumer spending, the steady remittance stream from overseas Filipino workers to the continuing robustness of business process outsourcing (BPO) and the thriving tourism sector,”  ALI chair Fernando Zobel de Ayala said during the company’s stockholders’ meeting on Tuesday.

“We expect these strengths to remain as our anchors as we carry out plans to achieve a more balanced and sustainable company by 2020,” he said.

Apart from building more hotel rooms and shopping malls to support the 2020 vision, ALI president Bernard Vincent Dy on Tuesdat said that the plan was to build 1.8 million sqm of BPO office space by year 2020. “We have about 715,000 sqm operating now.  There’s another 700,000 sqm under construction,” Dy said.

For BPOs, ALI senior vice president Jose Emmanuel Jalandoni said the group was still focused on growing the portfolio in Makati and Bonifacio Global City—two of ALI’s crown jewels—and elsewhere in Metro Manila. However, he said the group has likewise launched new office property developments in cities like Davao, which was now fully leased out, and Cagayan de Oro and Iloilo.

As of end-2015, ALI chief finance officer Jaime Ysmael estimated that new areas outside of traditional hubs accounted for 34 percent of total earnings. With projects in new areas like Pampanga (Alviera), Cavite (Vermosa) and Balintawak, Quezon City (Cloverleaf) as well as tourist estates in Palawan (Lio) and Sicogon Island, Ysmael said new areas would account for a greater share in earnings contribution.

To achieve the vision 2020, Ysmael said ALI would need as much as P90 billion in annual spending.

As of end-2015, ALI had 2,324 hotel room keys. Last year, it opened a 152-room Seda Hotel at Atria Park District in Iloilo, adding to its roster in BGC, Nuvali, Abreeza in Davao and Centrio in Cagayan de Oro alongside internationally branded hotels and El Nido Resorts.

More hotels under the homegrown Seda brand will rise at the site of the former Makati Intercon, in Makati Circuit, City Gate Makati, Bay Area and Vertis North while the Seda BGC will be expanded to provide 300 more rooms.

In the retail property business, ALI opened new retail hubs like Nuvali Solenad 3, Ayala Malls Legazpi in Albay, Shops at Atria in Iloilo, Ayala Malls Serin in Tagaytay, Circuit Lane in Circuit Makati and a new phase of UP Town Center. ALI thus ended last year with a total mall portfolio of 1.45 million sqm, half the footprint targeted by 2020.