AC Healthcare Holdings Inc., the healthcare arm of Ayala Corp., is expanding its portfolio of pharma, health technology, hospitals and clinics with planned P7-billion capital spending in 2023.
AC Health president Paolo Borromeo said in a news briefing following Ayala’s annual shareholders meeting the group would expand its pharma business by adding more stores and products.
Generika, which has over 750 stores nationwide, aims to reach 1,000 stores by 2025, while Healthyway Medical Clinic is expanding its footprint with the opening of new multispecialty centers outside Metro Manila. The new clinics are located in Cebu, Cagayan de Oro and Davao.
I.E. Medica and MedEthix, AC Health’s importation and distribution arms, will also bring in more molecules, particularly for oncology, women’s health and primary care.
Borromeo said the company is integrating its hospitals and clinics group under one unified brand—the Healthway Medical Network.
AC Health is also on track with the opening of its first flagship cancer hospital at Arca South, Taguig City.
The Healthway Cancer Care Hospital will be the country’s first dedicated cancer hospital to offer a complete range of cancer services from screening, diagnosis, treatment to post-cancer care.
Borromeo said these initiatives are in line with the company’s goal of serving one in every five Filipinos by 2030.
Meanwhile, Ayala president and chief executive Cezar Consing expressed optimism the conglomerate’s core and emerging businesses would sustain good performance in 2023, as the Philippines sees continued economic resurgence this year.
“If 2022 was marked by revenge spending on the part of consumers, 2023 may well see the resurgence of the economy as a whole. With strengthening macro, our businesses taken as a whole should get back to or exceed pre-pandemic levels in 2023,” Consing said.
Consing said the group would continue to rationalize the portfolio this year so that each of the non-core business units has the potential to be the group’s next engine of growth.