Ayala Land ventures into healthcare

MANILA, Philippines - Property giant Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) is venturing into healthcare for the first time by introducing hospitals in its provincial mixed-use developments.

The hospitals would complement the commercial, office and residential offerings of ALI in its regional centers, its top executive said.

“ALI will provide hospital buildings in selected areas and will have a professional medical group manage the facility,” ALI president and CEO Antonino T. Aquino said in an e-mail.

“The first facility is under construction in our Atria mixed-use development in Iloilo,” Aquino said.

Its first hospital project is a P600-million partnership with Panay Medical Ventures Inc. which is a group of local doctors that were trained at the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital.

Aquino said mixed-use developments in Makati and Bonifacio Global City in Taguig have benefited significantly from the presence of hospitals.

Hospitals in the business districts include Makati Medical Center and St. Luke’s Medical Center.

“Together with schools and churches, our residential, shopping center, office and hotel products completed these developments and made them successful business districts,” Aquino said.

“We would like to follow this best practice (of putting up hospitals) in our other regional centers,” Aquino said.

So far, the property unit of the Ayala conglomerate has 31 growth centers nationwide, up from just nine in 2009. It has 5,694 hectares of land bank.

Growth centers and mixed- use developments are located in areas like Bacolod, Cebu, Iloilo in the Visayas; Pampanga, Subic and Bataan in Central Luzon; Quezon City, Fairview and Pasig in Metro Manila; and Davao and Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao.

It would be the first venture of Ayala Corp., the country’s oldest conglomerate, in the healthcare sector. To date, Pangilinan-led Metro Pacific Investments Corp. is the largest healthcare group in the country given its seven hospitals and a bed capacity of around 2,000.

The property firm allotted P65.5 billion in capital expenditures this year as it plans to launch 69 new projects worth P129 billion to ensure continuous growth in the coming years.

In the first quarter, profits of the property developer jumped 30 percent to P2.76 billion on the back of better performance across all business segments. Consolidated revenues hit P18.53 billion, up 38 percent from the P13.39 billion in the same period last year.

The property arm of the Ayala conglomerate is wrapping up its 5-10-15 program which was launched in 2009 amid the global financial crisis.

It is a five-year plan ending in 2014 that aims to boost net income to P10 billion and return on equity to 15 percent.

ALI is set to continue this year the trend of double-digit growth in revenues and profits. Earnings of ALI surged 27 percent to P9.04 billion last year from P7.14 billion on strong revenues from residential, hotel, office and commercial projects.