The Ayala Family confirmed news reports that it planned to spend roughly ?297 billion on capital expenditures (known as “capex”; it’s money used to build, upgrade, or maintain assets), with the majority of that capex pie getting split between Ayala Land [ALI 35.10 1.30%] (P92 billion), Globe [GLO 3260.00 1.75%] (P87 billion), and AC Energy [ACEN 9.59 0.62%] (P61 billion).
Ayala Corp [AC 862.00 0.69%] CEO, Fernando Zobel, is quoted as saying about the capex increase: “It’s our way of showing our commitment to helping in the recovery.”
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To my knowledge, if AC pulls through and actually spends this amount of money on capex this year, it will be a record for the company.
Last year, AC allocated P197 billion to capex, which was higher than its original P182 billion estimate at the start of the year, but far lower than the P275 billion that AC planned to spend in 2020 before Taal, COVID, and more COVID derailed those plans and set us back a couple of years.
There is something inherently healthy about seeing one of the country’s largest conglomerates make plans to spend a record amount of money on growth initiatives.
There’s no telling what AC might have been spending in 2022 on capex if COVID never happened and 2020 went as planned, but it’s great to see AC return to its trendline and post plans that look impressive relative even to pre-pandemic years.
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