Fast food giant deems Cebu as key market

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu remains a key market for Jollibee Foods Corp. amid Cebu's continued economic growth and strong consumption.

Mia Ali Faridoon, trade marketing officer at JFC, said the growing number of businesses in Cebu bodes well with consumption growth.

"Cebu is growing and [there are] more businesses in both industry and residential," she said in an interview yesterday.

The consumption potential in central business districts -- where most of the consuming young adults and even tourists are -- is also a key consumption driver, she also noted.

Faridoon added the country's largest fast food company has also expanded to the city's outskirts to reach the residential markets.

To date, JFC now has 64 stores in Cebu and around 140 branches all over the Visayas area.

This year, JFC plans to open 17 stores in Visayas.

In 2016, it opened 25 stores in Visayas, five of which are in Cebu. That is on top of the store renovations made last year.

Faridoon said the Visayas and Mindanao regions continue to be key growth areas for the company given their growth potential in terms of consumption.

In an earlier stock exchange disclosure, the listed company said its net income attributable to the parent rose to P6.14 billion in 2016, up 25 percent from P4.93 billion recorded in 2015. This translates to P5.72 in earnings per share.

JFC grew its full-year revenues 13.1 percent to P113.99 billion from P100.78 billion, as system-wide sales increased 14.1 percent to P149.14 billion from P130.73 billion on the continued expansion of its global store network.

The company attributed the improvement to the continued expansion of its global store network.

In 2016, JFC opened 340 stores: 243 in the Philippines, 60 in China, seven in the United States and 30 in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Its joint ventures also added 71 Highlands Coffee and three Pho 24 in Vietnam; three 12 Hotpot in China; and 51 Smashburger, mostly in the US.

“In 2016, we opened the most number of stores in JFC’s history,” President and Chief Executive Office Ernesto Tanmantiong was quoted as saying in an earlier statement. “This was made possible by improving the return on investments on our stores and by increasing our organization capability to build and open more stores, in better locations and with better quality than ever before -- on a worldwide basis.”

JFC also renovated 200 existing stores in the Philippines and 150 abroad. It plans to spend P14 billion more to open new outlets and renovate the existing ones.

As of end-December 2016, JFC had 2,643 restaurants in the Philippines under the brands Jollibee, Chowking, Greenwich, Red Ribbon, Mang Inasal and Burger King. It operated 611 more in China, Vietnam, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Canada, Oman and the US.

Shares of JFC were up at P205.60 apiece in morning trading at the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday. (FREEMAN)