Niche marketing

Publicly listed Vista Land, probably one of the busiest property development companies in the country at present, will soon be adding a unit to address the housing needs of the lower income bracket of society.

Camille Villar, who now heads the company’s corporate communications group, revealed over lunch that because Camella, which used to be the affordable housing unit of the group, is selling houses at the P1.5 million to P3 million price range, there appears to be a need for another subsidiary to handle the P800,000 to below P1.5 million price range.

This new unit will be called Lessandra that will focus on the specialized housing needs of a niche market, that of the P800,000 to P1.2 million bracket. Camella by the way will be focusing on developments in the provinces.

Vista Land will also consolidate all its vertical and mostly purely residential tower developments into Vista Towers, regardless of whether it is Brittany, Crown Asia, Camella, or Lessandra who will be developing the project.

Brittany will remain as Vista Land’s high-end development arm, focusing on the P8 million to P50 million price range while Crown Asia will be the middle income subsidiary and will take care of the P3 to P8 million property price range.

Currently, Brittany is developing three vertical projects while Crown Asia has one in Salcedo and another in Ortigas. Camella meanwhile also has high and mid-rise developments in Pasong Tamo, Pasig, University Belt, Cubao, Sucat, Taguig and New Manila. As planned, all these will be transferred to Vista Towers.

New business

Easy Call Communications Philippines is asking the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) for authority to go into nationwide data communications network business.

As planned, Easy Call wants to provide broadband or high-speed Internet service connectivity via the sale of bandwidth to subscribers through leased lines and DSL.

Based on its submissions to the NTC, Easy Call said these services will be offered to primary and secondary medical hospitals as well as educational institutions in the country.

In the case of hospitals, the services will focus on the transfer of medical records, including X-rays, CT scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and electrocardiogram (ECG) results and other obligatory visual rendition of case. The company noted that the speed by which these records are shared by medical professionals is crucial to patients, thus the need for high-speed and reliable connectivity.

In the case of schools, the new service, according to Easy Call, will benefit educational institutions by increasing resources available to students and teachers, and will enable school administrators and teachers to spend less time on administration and recordkeeping.

Easy Call might be on the right track. It said that the Philippine Hospital Association alone has 3,850 private community clinics, excluding PHA’s 1,900 member hospitals. The size of potential markets for hospitals alone means at least 5,750 new subscribers.

Meanwhile, the total number of elementary and secondary schools, both private and public, as of 2007-2008 is a whopping 52,921, not to mention another 627 colleges and universities.

Education and medical area, probably, are among the sectors that badly need fast connectivity if they are to become world-class. Easy Call cites a Word Bank report that says only 40 percent of Philippine public schools are equipped with computer laboratories, only six percent of which are able to connect to the Internet.

Data from the NTC also show that while the fixed line subscriber base has increased eight percent to 3.9 million in 2007 from 3.6 million in 2006, only 30 percent or around 1.2 million lines have access to the Internet.

There is however one drawback to Easy Call’s plan. The company told the NTC that it had to recompute its financial feasibility study due to the impending entry of Liberty Telecom into the wireless data communications market. With the planned entry of San Miguel Corp. into Liberty, the once moribund and lifeless telecommunications company is threatening to become a very strong player in the telco industry.

SMC plans to acquire up to 49 percent of the capital stock of Liberty Telecommunications Holdings, Inc. (LTHI), of which 32.7 percent will be purchased from existing stockholders for P2.2 billion while the remaining will be acquired in coordination with Liberty’s joint venture partner Qatar Telecom.

To further strengthen its entry in the high-growth telco industry, SMC said that once it succeeds in acquiring Express Telecommunications Co. (Extelcom), the latter will be merged with Liberty and a holding company for SMC’s telecommunications business will be created

SMC president Ramon Ang has recently revealed that they have entered into a memorandum of understanding to acquire a stake in Extelcom from the group led by businessman Roberto Ongpin and UK-based Ashmore Investment Management Ltd. As part of the deal, the seller undertakes to clean up the company before SMC finally comes in.

To illustrate how serious SMC is into becoming a strong telco player, Ang disclosed that they might match the $500-million investment of QTel in Liberty or if needed, even more.”

To date, SMC is conducting a legal and financial due diligence of Extelcom to determine whether an investment shall be made, and is negotiating with the stockholders of Extelcom the terms and conditions of a non-binding MOU.

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