Megaworld sees Fort Bonifacio as Philippine BPO hub

MANILA, Philippines - Megaworld Corp., the Andrew Tan-led property giant, is optimistic about the prospects of Fort Bonifacio becoming the prime business process outsourcing (BPO) destination in the country.

“We feel that Fort Bonifacio will continue to remain very strong in terms of office space, particularly BPO and office leasing,” Megaworld senior vice president Jericho Go told reporters Monday night.

He said prices have appreciated significantly, with Megaworld continuing to exhibit strong growth in lease revenues.

“The (price) range in Fort Bonifacio is P700 to P900 per square meter. We’re already in the P900 level (for office),” Go said.

The company is on track to build an additional 100,000 square meters of gross leasable area in its portfolio next year. “That is the minimum,” he noted.

He said Megaworld is the only developer that has at least 130 tenants for its office space.

“The biggest portion of leases comes from expansion not from new ones,” Go said.

The company is building six office towers in its 34.5-hectare McKinley West township in the southern part of Fort Bonifacio. These are One West Campus, Two West Campus, Three West Campus, Five West Campus, Six West Campus and Eight West Campus.

The six towers will have a total of 60,000 square meters of office space, and will be part of the 350,000 square meter office space expansion of the property firm in the entire Fort Bonifacio in the next three years.

Megaworld earlier announced it was allocating P20 billion for the expansion of its office portfolio in Fort Bonifacio until 2018.

To date, Megaworld has over 700,000 square meters of office space inventory  and around 300,000 square meters of the inventory are in Fort Bonifacio, particularly in McKinley Hill.

Megaworld  is the single biggest developer and landholder in the former military camp with approximately 105 hectares of land for its four township developments, namely McKinley Hill with 50.4 hectares, McKinley West with 34.5 hectares, Uptown Bonifacio with 15.4 hectares and Forbes Town Center with five hectares.

 The company reported a net income of P8.35 billion in the nine months to September, 12.52 percent higher than the P7.42 billion recorded a year ago.

 Consolidated revenues grew 10.85 percent to P33.53 billion this year.

Among the different business segments, the company’s rental unit recorded the fastest growth of 24 percent during the period with income hitting P6.44 billion from P5.2 billion a year ago.