BIZ BUZZ: DoubleDragon within striking distance

Last week’s big news was that DoubleDragon Corp. of billionaires Edgar “Injap” Sia II and Tony Tancaktiong had become the country’s fourth largest shopping mall developer and landlord with the opening of its 45th property, the latest CityMall in Surigao City.

What the firm didn’t say is that it is actually within close striking distance of the country’s top three mall developers.

In fact, Biz Buzz learned that DoubleDragon will—barring any last minute hitches— probably overtake its closest competitor and become the Philippines’ third largest shopping mall developer as soon as next year.

The Sia-Tancaktiong venture is set to open seven more community malls across the country between now and next year.

After last week’s opening of CityMall-Surigao, three more CityMalls are slated to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2023, namely CityMall-Bay Laguna, CityMall-Palo Leyte, and CityMall-Antique.

For 2024, four more CityMalls are set to open, namely CityMall-General Trias Cavite, CityMall-Guiwan Zamboanga, CityMall-Ormoc and CityMall-Ozamiz.

As such, by the end of next year, the firm will almost certainly overtake Ayala Land in terms of number of shopping malls, and will only be one mall short of current second-placer Robinsons Land (the leader SM Prime remains far ahead).

Once this milestone is achieved, DoubleDragon will have a gross leasable area across its entire portfolio of properties of 1.29 million square meters (sqm) fully built and completed, substantially exceeding its stated goal of topping 1 million sq m of leasable space set in 2020.

What’s more impressive is that DoubleDragon is achieving all this within 10 years of this plan being set into motion when the company listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange in April 2014. Not bad. Not everyone can claim to deliver on their promises like this firm can.

—Daxim L. Lucas