Foreign investors may now buy more shares of Jollibee Foods Corporation as the Philippine Stock Exchange has approved the firm’s request to amend its Foreign Ownership Limit from 40 percent to "No Limit" (up to 100 percent).
This is in light of the amendments to the Jollibee's primary and secondary purposes under its Articles of Incorporation, particularly the removal of the Corporation's ability to own, acquire, mortgage, pledge or encumber land and/or any interest therein.
The Philippine Constitution and the Public Land Act prohibit foreign individuals from owning land. Only Filipino citizens or corporations or partnerships wherein at least 60 percent of its capital stock is owned by Filipinos can acquire and own land.
In May last year, Jollibee announced that it was amending its Articles of Incorporation so it can no longer directly own real estate—which will then allow it to have more foreign shareholders.
The firm’s board and, later, its shareholders was secured to amend the Second Article of the Amended Articles of Incorporation of the Company to remove from the primary purpose, the ability of the Corporation to directly own real properties, but to retain the company's ability to invest in companies that own real properties, including land, within the limits allowed by applicable laws.
The proposed amendment to the Articles of Incorporation took effect after approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Jollibee, one of the largest Asian food service companies, reported a 15.3 percent growth in attributable net income to P2.81 billion in the first nine months of 2024 as third quarter earnings rose 24.1 percent to P8.47 billion.
According toJollibee Group President and CEO Ernesto Tanmantiong, "During the third quarter, we successfully completed the acquisition of Compose Coffee and the results that we are reporting today include the impact of this value-accretive transaction.”
“Our consolidated system-wide sales (SWS) for the quarter increased by 13.2 percent, driven by the international business which grew by 20.5 percent. Compose Coffee contributed 11.5 percent to the growth of the international business’ SWS and added 2,580 stores to the global store network as at end of the quarter,” he added.
The Philippine business saw a healthy increase in SWS (up 8.5 percent) and same-store sales (up 6.4 percent) even after registering strong SWS and SSS growths of 16.5 percent and 13.0 percent, respectively, last year. Organically, the international business grew SWS by 9.0 percent and SSS by 4.5 percent.
The Jollibee brand, which has over 1,700 stores globally and accounts for 51.0 percent of the Jollibee Group's organic SWS grew robustly by 12.6 percent in the third quarter.
The growth was broad-based, coming from all regions: Philippines up 10.3 percent, North America higher by 14.4 percent, EMEAA growing by 26.8 percent, and China (Hong Kong and Macau) up 12.7 percent.
1 month ago
7
