Ayala stays on expansion path, seeks partnerships

Ayala Corp. is set to ramp up partnerships in the coming years as it eyes new investment opportunities in the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia, said chair and CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala.

The conglomerate is already undergoing changes in its business model, with power and infrastructure units seen to deliver significant returns in the next few years to add to revenues from its core telecommunications, real estate, water service, banking and electronics manufacturing arms.

Ayala turned 181 years old this March and while Zobel said the company was embracing new management styles and would like to keep its growth strategies “flexible,” it would maintain a decades-old practice of executing partnerships with other groups and even business rivals.

“In many cases, we have been very comfortable in sharing an opportunity with others. We have a good track record on that front,” Zobel said in a briefing following the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on Friday.

“Not all Philippine corporations move in that way but both of us, Fernando and I, decided a long time ago that we would like to develop a culture where we could build trust with a variety of stakeholders,” Zobel said, referring to his brother and Ayala president, Fernando Zobel de Ayala.

“We saw this [strategy] as a potential strength and we don’t see this slowing down,” he said.

Recent high profile-tie ups involve most of the company’s ventures in power and infrastructure and.

Ayala has won deals with Metro Pacific Investments Corp. for a common ticketing system for Metro Manila’s elevated railways and a railway extension deal to Cavite province, both under the Aquino administration’s Public-Private Partnership Program.

It revealed in February a partnership with SM Prime Holdings, Aboitiz Equity Ventures and Megaworld Corp. for a PPP expressway dike and land reclamation project in Laguna Lake.

The foray into new areas comes as it seeks to sustain profit, which is forecast to hit P20 billion this year from P18.6 billion in 2014.

It is setting aside P185 billion for capital spending in 2015, with more than half of the budget going to Ayala Land followed by Globe Telecom.

Tie-ups would play a bigger role as Ayala, while “overweight” on the Philippines in terms of investments, is looking at the broader Asean, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is home to over 600 million people, for new investment deals.

“We are looking at other opportunities in Asean,” Zobel said, while declining to elaborate. “Today, there is more talk of Asean as a base.”