JFC eyes 200 new stores in PH, overseas in ’13

Local fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. plans to open a total of 200 new stores this year, half of which will be in the Philippines and half overseas, mostly in mainland China.

In an economic forum held by ING and the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines yesterday, Jollibee chief finance officer Ysmael Baysa said that after opening 100 new stores in the Philippines and 100 overseas this year, JFC would further expand store network by at least 10-15 percent next year.

Baysa said JFC was unfazed by the current volatility in emerging market assets. “It’s better to have the correction now when it’s not yet catastrophic,” he said.

He said JFC would continue its business expansion program. “There’s money. There’s opportunity… where others go away, we can get in,” he said.

The store expansion program forms part of JFC’s P5-billion capital spending program. “That number (budget) hasn’t changed despite recent volatility,” he said.

Most of the overseas store expansion will be in mainland China, where the group plans to reach a critical mass of 500 stores by next year, said Baysa. This is the scale needed for JFC to break even in China, the company’s single biggest overseas market.

JFC’s goal is to eventually grow overseas business to account for half of its total business but because the local market is growing rapidly, this remains a distant dream. At present, the offshore market accounts for 20 percent of sales turnover.