COSCO Capital Inc., the holding firm of businessman Lucio Co, said on Friday its board approved the buyback of its shares of up to P1 billion.
“The board authorized the chairman and president to execute the buy-back in behalf of the company,” Cosco’s disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange read.
Cosco also declared a regular and special cash dividends of a combined P0.08 per share for a total of P592 million.
The company’s shares were up by 1 percent during Friday’s midday trading at P8.08 per share.
Cosco has been snapping up several retail assets this year to further boost its presence in the sector as the Co family expands out of its supermarket chain under the brand Puregold and membership shopping brand S&R.
Cosco and Puregold Price Club Inc. will spend a combined P9.5 billion by next year, as the companies expand its retail operation in the Philippines that include more supermarkets and the construction of shopping malls and convenience stores.
Leonardo Dayao, president for both firms, earlier told reporters that Puregold is allocating some P5.5 billion to further expand its number of supermarkets to include areas in the Visayas and Mindanao, while Cosco may spend at least P4 billion for the construction of new shopping malls.
Puregold’s capital expenditure next year will be bigger than this year’s programmed spending of P3 billion, while Cosco was lower than this year’s actual spend of about P6 billion after the Co-led company bought Office Warehouse and Liquigaz.
“There will be acquisition also for Cosco next year, plus we will construct new malls,” Dayao said.
Dayao explained that Cosco will acquire community-type malls, spending some P2.5 billion for the venture, while the rest of the P1.5 billion will be used for the construction of between three to four malls.
Each new mall costs about P400 million to build, Dayao said.
For the Puregold-branded supermarket, Dayao said the company would spend some P2.5 billion for the construction of 25 new branches, between P1 billion and P1.5 billion for S&R Membership Shopping and another P1.5 billion for acquisition of other supermarkets.
At the moment, the company is targeting to build two membership-shopping stores per year. For 2015, Cosco will build one in Bacolod or in Iloilo and another one in southern Luzon or somewhere in Batangas and Laguna. It will open a branch in Cavite by middle of the month, the only one for this year.
“I think the estimate we had before the economic developments in the Philippines remains the same. So there is increase in the number of high-income customers that can be members of S&R,” Dayao said.
It currently has nine S&R stores and will end the year at 233 Puregold supermarkets.
For the first three quarters of the year, Cosco reported a net income of P4.03 billion, some 139-percent increase from last year’s P2.35 billion.
VG Cabuag