Pryce mulls sale of memorial parks

MANILA, Philippines - Pryce Corp. is open to selling its memorial parks to focus on expanding its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) business, its top official said.

While it is not in a hurry to sell the assets, the company has received the authorization from shareholders to sell the memorial parks in a recent stockholders’ meeting.

Pryce chairman and CEO Salvador Escano told The STAR the company has no plans to expand the memorial parks business and would rather pour in funds in the LPG segment, its main income and revenue driver.

“So that management would immediately act rather than call for a stockholders’ meeting, that’s why we asked for authorization. We are not actively seeking (to sell),” he said.

“But if we have any plans for expansion, we’d rather just put it in LPG,” Escano said.

The growth of the memorial parks business is much slower compared to that of LPG, the company official said.

“It’s not a very robust one. With population growing…I would say that it’s growing because the traditional memorial parks that are run or operated by government or churches are in bad shape, they are not well-maintained. But it’s not growing at 15-20 percent,” Escano said.

This is compared with the LPG segment’s growth of 15.39 percent in terms of sales volume in the first half, which is above 2016’s benchmark industry growth of 14 percent.

LPG sales, the group’s main product under the PryceGas brand, accounted for 93.52 percent of total revenues for that period. The rest was from sales of industrial gases, real estate and pharmaceutical products.

If sold, proceeds from the sale of memorial parks would be declared as cash dividends. “We will return majority of it to shareholders,” Escano said.