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Custodian says PICOP loses P800m worth of machineries to ‘robbers’
By Othel V. Campos
THE custodian of the defunct Philippine Industries Corporation of the Philippines is seeking assistance from the Department of Trade and Industry to help recover some, if not all, the back pays, benefits and capitalization lost because of alleged looting and other illegal activities surrounding the proposed rehabilitation program.
Court-appointed rehabilitation receiver Francisco Buencamino said about P800 million worth of machineries and equipment were forcibly taken out by “robbers”.
“I wrote to DTI for them to be aware that there is the possibility of loss of investor confidence in the general investments climate in the country, as far as foreign investments is concerned,” he said, adding that a foreign entity invested to transform the old paper mill in Mindanao into a modern and functional paper manufacturing facility. He said of the looted machineries and equipment, about P500 million equipment represented capital investment shared by a third party foreign investor, which was supposed to modernize the paper mill as part of the rehabilitation plan for PICOP.
“This has been covered into scrap metal and materials by robbers. They scrapped everything from crushers to digesters, and they even took out the air-conditioning system. We had the plan laid out and it’s been two years that we’re trying to speed up the rehabilitation of the paper plant,”
Globe Group president and chief executive Ernest Cu talks about the company’s purpose-driven approach to empowering people through digitalization on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Globe is accelerating its pivot from a traditional telecommunications company to a full-fledged tech enterprise, always on the lookout for the next big problem to solve towards digital enablement and transformation. The shift from telco to techco began when Globe became the number one mobile operator in the country in 2016. The success prompted the organization to expand its vision and place greater emphasis on digital solutions.
PHINMA bullish on construction, property and education businesses
By Jenniffer B. Austria
CONGLOMERATE PHINMA Corp. is bullish on the prospects of its construction, property and education businesses in 2023 amid the full reopening of the economy and improving macroeconomic conditions.
PHINMA said in a disclosure to the stock exchange it expected construction materials and property units to recover in terms of profit this year as global supply chains and foreign exchange rates continued to stabilize and input costs decreased.
The company said the profitability of subsidiary PHINMA Education Holdings Inc. would also improve as school opening schedules normalized.
PHINMA Education is expanding capacity in anticipation of continuing enrollment growth, it said.
The conglomerate said PHINMA Education became the country’s largest private education network in terms of student population as it registered 124,501 enrollees for school year 2022-23, up 30 percent from the previous school year.
PHINMA Education owns nine colleges and universities nationwide.
PHINMA said it expected its hotel business to post a strong recovery as occupancy rates and average daily rates continued to improve with leisure and business travel gaining momentum.
PHINMA reported a consolidated income of P1.5 billion in 2022, down
18 percent year-on-year on higher raw materials costs driven by global supply chain disruptions, a strong US dollar and increased education costs due to a revision in school opening schedules. Consolidated revenues climbed 10 percent year-on-year to P17.7 billion.
PHINMA Construction Materials Group posted a net income of P494.9 million in 2022, down 45 percent from P902 million a year ago.
PHINMA Education also registered a 24.5-percent decline in net income in 2022 to P633 million from P839 million in 2021, due to a revision in the school opening schedules, reflecting nine months of regular semester for 2022, compared to eleven months in 2021.
Buencamino said. He noted the lack of support from the host community and from the local police force.
Buencamino said Land Bank of the Philippines also had exposure of P2 billion.
“I’ve written a separate letter to LandBank president Cecille Borromeo asking why the bank has not given a pffft of what has happened and what is happening to PICOP, which was the biggest and only integrated forest and paper mill in the country,” Buencamino said.
Buencamino said he would not allow the facility to be foreclosed and then liquidated. “How about the 12,000 shareholders, 8,000 employees, 2,500 claimants and other creditors who should also have their share,” he said.
Pse Index Closing
By Alena Mae S. Flores
ABOITIZ Equity Ventures Inc. said
Tuesday net income reached P24.8 billion in 2022, or 9 percent lower than P27.3 billion it booked in 2021.
AEV said in a disclosure to the stock exchange it recognized non-recurring gains of P3.5 billion last year on foreign exchange gains from the US dollar cash revaluation and liquid financial instruments, compared to the P527 million in non-recurring gains in 2021.
The conglomerate said that without these one-off gains, core net income in 2022 reached P21.3 billion, a 21 percent decline year-on-year.
“As we closed another transformative year for the Aboitiz Group, our techglomerate continues to take shape, not just in our financial reports, but also in the major culture shifts taking place within our organization. We will continue to focus our energy and resources on strategic innovation and, more importantly, on people and talent,” said Aboitiz Group president and chief executive Sabin Aboitiz.
Consolidated net income in the fourth quarter went down by 55 percent to P3.5 billion from P7.8 billion in the same period in 2021.
AEV signed a strategic partnership with JERA Asia Private Limited for Aboitiz Power Corp. in 2021 as part of its transformation strategy.
By Darwin G. Amojelar
PLDT Group is eyeing the use of drones to inspect cellular sites in Metro Manila to pave the way for more efficient and environment-friendly network operations. PLDT Inc. and Smart Communications Inc. successfully completed a proof of concept for drone-aided digital inspection of cellular sites. The PoC, conducted in a number of Smart towers in Quezon City, Valenzuela and Caloocan, was held with vHive and counterpart Amdocs using drone technology to capture multiple cell sites’ information and produce “digital twins” of these network towers.
The use of autonomous drone technology in capturing network tower information is expected to later replace the time-consuming, dangerous and manual task of climbing each and every tower to gather and record data.
Turning the drone-captured images into a digital twin of the tower with the aid of artificial intelligence and machine learning will also enable Smart to build a single source of field-based truth across the entire Smart network and will facilitate faster and data-driven decisionmaking.