BUSINESSMAN Lucio Co, out to establish his own retail empire in the country, has spent some P1.3 billion in share repurchases, or buybacks, of his various publicly traded firms.
Cosco Capital Inc., Co’s holding firm, said it spent some P396.64 million in buying back 472,200 common shares at prices ranging from P8.33 to P8.41 a share.
Supermarket operator Puregold Price Club Inc. also bought back 28,200 shares at an average price of P38.6749 per share, for a total price of P1.09 billion.
The Co family is expanding its supermarket chain under the Puregold brand and its membership shopping unit S&R, and has snapped up several retail assets such as a liquefied petroleum gas retailer and an office-supplies store chain, and subsequently subsuming these under the Cosco empire.
Cosco and Puregold will spend a combined P9.5 billion by next year, as Co plans to build his own chain of community malls even as Cosco begins building the Lawson chain of convenience stores.
Leonardo Dayao, president for both firms, earlier told reporters Puregold has set aside P5.5 billion to build more supermarkets in the Visayas and Mindanao. Cosco, meanwhile, is to spend at least P4 billion for the construction of new shopping malls.
Puregold’s capital expenditure (capex) next year, will be bigger than this year’s programmed spending of only P3 billion. Cosco’s proposed spending plan should prove lower than this year’s actual spending of some P6 billion after the Co-led company bought the Office Warehouse brand and Liquigaz.
“There will be acquisitions also for Cosco next year, plus we will construct new malls,” Dayao said.
Dayao said Cosco plans the acquisition of community-type malls and will spend some P2.5 billion for the venture. The balance of P1.5 billion will be used for the construction of maybe three or four malls.
Each new mall costs around P400 million to construct, Dayao said.
For the Puregold supermarket chain, Dayao said the company will spend P2.5 billion for the construction of 25 new branches, another P1 billion to P1.5 billion for its S&R Membership Shopping units and still another P1.5 billion for the acquisition of other supermarkets.
At the moment, the company targets the construction of two membership-shopping stores a year. Next year, it will build one in Bacolod or in Iloilo in the Visayas and one more in southern Luzon or somewhere in Batangas and Laguna. It will open a branch in Cavite by middle of the month, the lone opening for this year.
“I think the estimate we had before remains the same. So there is an increase in the number of high-income customers that can be members of S&R,” Dayao said.
The business currently has nine S&R stores and will end the year with 233 Puregold
supermarket units.
In the first nine months, Cosco reported net income of P4.03 billion, or 139 percent more than last year’s P2.35 billion.