Ayala sells HCX Technology

MANILA, Philippines — Ayala Corp., the country’s oldest conglomerate, is divesting all of its shares in HCX Technology Partners Inc.

In a disclosure yesterday, HCX is a full-fledged systems integration company offering human capital, customer relationship management and digital solutions to its clients.

Ayala Corp. established HCX in 2016 as a shared services center providing human capital management services to the Ayala Group of companies.

As part of its divestment, Ayala Corp. entered into a share purchase agreement with Asti Business Services Inc. (ABSI) for the sale of its 100 percent stake in the human capital management services provider.

“With its strong expertise in providing business process and shared service support, IT systems integration and consultancy services, and having a wide clientele network, ABSI is best positioned to take HCX to its next phase of growth,” Ayala Corp. said.

ABSI is a subsidiary of Global Telecom Inc.’s Asticom Technology Inc. It provides enterprises with end-to-end solutions for human resources, administrative, finance, and information technology functions.

Last week, Ayala Corp. president and CEO Fernando Zobel de Ayala said the group would focus on fewer businesses after a decade of expansion.

“The last 10 years we’ve grown quite a bit and we’ve gone into a large number of things. We’ve now decided to focus a little bit more on fewer businesses and try to deepen our involvement there,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week.

Ayala’s core businesses are banking, telecommunications, property and most recently, renewable energy.

Zobel said the company would  focus and expand these businesses rapidly.

“We’ve done some value realization to try to sell off some pieces of our portfolio where we have passive investments,” he said.