Metro Pacific Investment Corp. of business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan is being more careful in choosing projects it would invest in moving forward, with the bias on ventures that would promote a balanced investment portfolio for the group.
In a dinner with journalists Monday, Pangilinan said the Metro Pacific Group isn’t interested in participating in the Metro Manila Subway Project even after one of its unit, Manila Electric Co., is now helping the subway project build a multi-million peso switching station to ensure stable electricity supply for the train operation.
“We’re not familiar with the business of subways. But what we hear is that subways are going to make money,” said Pangilinan, whose Metro Pacific Group is part of a consortium that operates and maintains the LRT 1, a 20-kilometer electric train system in Metro Manila now being extended to nearby Cavite province.
“We’re also careful of balancing our portfolio. Part of the reason why we opted out of the super consortium for NAIA is because that would be adding more regulated business into our portfolio. So, I doubt it,” said Pangilinan. “There’s also big sums involved.”
“It (subway) is something that the country needs, so it should be built. In our case, we have quite a heavy concentration of regulated industries,” he added.
Metro Pacific Group also has investments in tollways, power distribution and generation, water, railway, and telecommunications—all major investments in sectors whose earnings stream are largely determined by government.
Pangilinan also brushed aside suggestion that Metro Pacific participate in other Public Private Partnership projects. “Nothing that comes to mind quickly that’s visible to us,” he said.
As for the anticipated merger of the tollway operations of Metro Pacific and San Miguel Corp., Pangilinan said it could take a while as “the devil is in the details,” especially in the valuation of the tollway assets given the size of Metro Pacific’s tollway business both in the Philippines and overseas, and the still expanding portfolio San Miguel.
But Pangilinan is confident that if Metro Pacific and San Miguel tollways businesses are eventually combined “it will be a significant company headquartered in the Philippines. It will be something, I think, we can all be proud of if we are successful in doing that. And there is a lot of goodwill on both sides to see this work,” he added.
