AYALA Healthcare Holdings Inc. (AC Health) bared on Wednesday its plan to expand its retail-health network and primary care facility with more than 1,000 Generika Drugstores and around 100 FamilyDOC clinics by the next couple of years.
With almost 800 outlets at present, Generika Drugstore is co-owned (50 percent) by the health arm of the Ayala Corp. with the Ferrer family (50 percent).
Established in 2003, it provides consumers with greater access to affordable yet quality generic medicine; in-store services like free blood-pressure check, computerized medicine guides, and scheduled free consultations; as well as a series of community events through Gabay Kalusugan.
“We hope to be able to grow to a little over 1,000 stores by the year 2020. That’s a target that we’ve always had to do, when Ayala came in in 2015,” said Generika Drugstore VP for Operations Jay Ferrer during their press briefing held at The Blue Room, Tower One & Exchange Plaza in Makati City.
“We collaborated and we thought we wanted to expand this so much further so that we could share and offer the Generika services to more Filipinos in the country,” he added.
AC Health President and CEO Paolo Borromeo said some of the 200-plus outlets to be opened will be through franchising.
“But we also have plans to increase the number of company-owned stores,” he said, without citing the exact figure.
FamilyDOC is a wholly owned unit of AC Health that combines the services of a clinic, a diagnostics facility and a pharmacy.
Currently, it has a total of 40 clinics located in Laguna, Cavite, Parañaque, Taguig, Pasig, Pateros and Las Piñas—all serving over 157,000 unique patients to date.
Following its expansion in Caloocan, Marikina and Quezon City, this 3-in-1 basic health-care facility is reaching more communities within Metro Manila. It aims to expand in Valenzuela and Rizal.
“Today, we open our 41st clinic in Lower Bicutan. By the end of the year, we will be [having] more than 50 clinics operating,” FamilyDOC General Manager Raymund Paul Darroca said, citing their initiative to double the number in the next two years. “And we will be in almost all the major residential areas across mega Manila.”
When pressed on capitalization, AC Health declined to divulge the total investment needed for the expansion initiative.
“But it’s not a lot because the cost of a pharmacy and the cost of a clinic is not huge by any means. It is something I think we are prepared to do,” Borromeo said.
This expansion, he explained, will be funded by the committed budget of Ayala Corp. since AC Health was incepted in 2015.
“Overall, we’ve allocated up to $200 million for health care. That’s the commitment of Ayala to health care,” he said.
AC Health is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ayala Corp. and serves as the portfolio company for its health-care businesses.
Apart from Generika Drugstore and FamilyDOC, it is also investing in health-technology solutions, such as its HealthTech arm, Vigos Health Technologies, and MedGrocer, a Food and Drug Administration-licensed online pharmacy.
For the first half of 2018, Ayala Corp. reported a 7-percent increase in net income to P16.1 billion year-on-year. The publicly listed firm’s profits reached P8.4 billion in the second quarter of this year, 3 percent higher than the same period in 2017.