THE country’s largest fast-food service company Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) aims to achieve its target of opening 200 stores in the Philippines and abroad by year-end.
At the sidelines of the ING-Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines forum on Wednesday, JFC Chief Financial Officer Ysmael Baysa told reporters that the company intends to open a total of 100 stores in the country and another 100 stores abroad.
“For Jollibee Foods Corp., we have alloted a capex of P5.5 billion in expenditures this year and that number has not changed [despite] the recent volatility and drop in the value of the stock market and the depreciation of the peso. These recent developments have not affected or influenced our thinking of our investments. So out of the P5.5 billion, about 90 percent of that is for store expansion in the Philippines and 100 new stores outside the Philippines,” Baysa said.
The Jollibee executive said these stores are both company-owned and franchised. Around 50 of the new stores will be in China, while the rest will be opened across existing markets such as Vietnam and the United States.
He added that JFC intends to continue expanding in China despite the slowdown in its economy. Baysa said China remains an attractive market for the company.
“Of course, there are concerns but they do not necessarily change our strategy or our long-term plan,” Baysa said. “There are always two sides. We just have to have consistency of purpose, consistency of objective.”
JFC currently operates 2,102 stores in the country and 569 overseas. The Jollibee brand has 791 outlets in the Philippines and 98 abroad. Chowking and Yonghe King in China has 388 and 309 stores, respectively.
In a recent disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, JFC posted a P1.2-billion net income in the April-to-June period, an increase of 32.4 percent compared with the same period in 2012. It attributed its net income increase to a 13.6-percent growth in system-wide sales in. Around 5 percent of this growth was attributed to its expansion abroad and 9 percent was contributed by higher customer purchases.
Its businesses in the Philippines reported a 12.6-percent growth in system-wide sales, while overseas businesses reporter a growth of 17.5 percent. China accounted for the bulk of overseas net sales and posted a growth of 18.3 percent.
System-wide sales in Southeast Asia and the Middle East recorded a growth of 34.8 percent, while sales in the US grew by 6.3 percent.