JG Summit swings to P844 million profit

MANILA, Philippines — JG Summit Holdings Inc. posted a recovery in the third quarter.

Consolidated net income rose to P844 million, a turnaround from the reported net loss of P2.6 billion but still way below the P3.7 billion net income posted a year ago.

JG Summit president and CEO Lance Gokongwei said the conglomerate’s businesses continue to face challenges but noted that third quarter results are encouraging.

“With the easing of restrictions, economic activity has slowly returned and our different business units showed some quarter on quarter recovery but I also note that these results are far from ideal and still showed steep declines versus a year ago,” Gokongwei said.

“The prospects of a vaccine likewise give us hope that this will unlock further acceleration and recovery toward the latter part of 2021, Gokongwei said.

During the nine month period, JG Summit reported a net income of P124 million compared to P21 billion a year ago.

Improving contributions from petrochemicals and real estate coupled with reduced losses from air transport drove the recovery, JG Summit said.

However, the company acknowledged that the group’s operations remain to be challenged by the COVID-19 disruption.

The resilient top-line performance of the group’s food, banking and office business segments continue to temper the year-on-year decline in its airline, mall, hotel and petrochemical revenues in the nine-month period.

JG Summit closed the nine months of the year with consolidated revenues of P167.3 billion, 27 percent lower than last year.

The company’s  balance sheet provides financial flexibility to weather the pandemic-related risks and fuel the group’s recovery with gearing and net debt-to-equity ratios at 0.76 and 0.56, respectively, as of end-September.