MANILA  -The Gokongwei family-led JG Summit Holdings Inc. is “cautiously optimistic” for 2023 amid the continued recovery of the Philippine economy and the reopening of China, which would benefit its airline and petrochemicals segment.

This comes as the conglomerate said net income dropped to P700 million last year from P5.1 billion in 2021 while revenues jumped 36 percent to P312.4 billion, marking a new record high.

“We continue to remain cautiously optimistic in 2023 given the lingering geopolitical and global economic risk,” JG Summit president and CEO Lance Gokongwei said in a statement.

“With inflation forecast 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,” he added.

Philippines’ inflation slowed to 8.6% in Feb

Its major businesses are food and beverage giant Universal Robina Corp, Robinsons Land Corp., Cebu Pacific and JG Summit Olefins Corp.

Its other core investments were Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), PLDT Inc. and Singapore Land Group.

JG Summit said core profits during the year doubled to P6.2 billion. The figure includes efforts to protect margins and the sale of a portion of its shares in Meralco in a deal worth P12.4 billion.

“The group’s balance sheet provides enough financial flexibility to support further growth and weather any headwinds amid a highly volatile global landscape,” JG Summit said in the filing.

Meanwhile, the group underscored efforts to control expenses and bring down total debts by 22 percent amid the challenging cost environment in 2022.

“We have 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,” he said.

“2022 was the start of our 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,” he added.