MacroAsia Corp., a company led by tycoon Lucio Tan, plans to spin off its mining and water businesses this year, as it focuses on the aviation sector.
MacroAsia president and chief operating officer Joseph Chua said the company was currently in talks with mining companies for possible joint venture or sale of the mining operation.
The Infanta Nickel Project of MacroAsia is located in the barangays of Ipilan, Mason and Mambalot in Brooke’s Point town, Palawan.
“We can’t gave you a name because we just started. Mining is not our core business, so I think we better off either selling or joint venture,” Chua said.
“We are looking at any modes available now. That’s possible because the policy [on mining] is clear a little bit. We will spin it off because I think we can’t mix mining with aviation and water. It doesn’t mix well,” he said.
Chua said that MacroAsia’s water business would also be spun off. MacroAsia has water concessions in Nueva Viscaya, Boracay and Cavite.
“We will be purely aviation. We are very, very bullish on aviation because the tourism is growing,” he said.
Chua said he expected MacroAsia to sustain a double-digit growth this year, boosted by food and aviation businesses.
“With the growth of the business portfolios in food services, ground handling and MRO [maintenance, repair and overhaul], we look at 2017 with optimism,” Chua said.
“Barring any severe circumstances, we view such double-digit growth as continuing and sustainable, because the groundwork for our operational performance is already in place. Especially with a weaker peso that is projected in 2017, we as service exporters earning mostly in US dollars stand to benefit, as our revenues get to be translated into more Philippine peso to fund our mostly local costs,” he said.
MacroAsia posted a consolidated net income after tax of P440 million last year, or 29 percent higher than P341 million in 2015.
Revenues also rose to P2.33 billon last year from P1.92 billon in 2015.
MacroAsia programmed about P2.5 billon in capital expenditures from 2016 to 2017 to expand its aviation services and other businesses.