San Miguel Corp.’s strategy is to help people enjoy and make progress in their lives through the many products and services San Miguel offers.
In brief, San Miguel aims to make the world better. “We are enabling people by investing in industries that will make the biggest difference in their lives,” says its website.
Ramon S. Ang is vice chairman, president and chief operating officer of SMC. At the helm since 2002, he has drastically recast San Miguel’s mission and vision to create a greater impact on the lives of Filipinos, in particular, and on the future of the Philippines in general. Before 2002, RSA was chief adviser to Danding Cojuangco, the SMC chairman and CEO.
“Our new vision very clearly reflects how we see ourselves in the context of our country’s development,” SMC Chief Financial Officer Ferdinand Constantino pointed out at the annual stockholders meeting on June 14, 2018. “It puts emphasis on us having a strong sense of social, environmental, and economic responsibility, and declares our commitment to deliver on our nation’s goals,” he said.
FKC elaborated:
• Within the next three years, complete the largest capacity expansion in the history of our food and beverage businesses, to meet growing demand for our products and maintain cost affordability.
• Construct a new brewery in Misamis Oriental, Mindanao.
• Expand the capacity of our bottling plant in Sta. Rosa, Laguna.
• Put up additional breweries in Luzon, where demand is growing.
• Build a total of 17 facilities for our food business.
In 2018, SMC completed and inaugurated its new hotdog manufacturing facility in Cavite, effectively doubling capacity.
SMC also completed a feedmill in Mariveles, Bataan, and is completing another one in Bulacan province.
“This expansion seeks to address the rising demand by consumers of quality products at affordable prices. At the same time, such expansion will provide thousands of new jobs and spark growth in local economies in various regions nationwide,” gushed CFO Constantino.
He added: “The impact of this unprecedented expansion of our food and beverage businesses becomes even more compelling in light of our decision to consolidate San Miguel Brewery, San Miguel Pure Foods, and Ginebra San Miguel, into one powerhouse company: San Miguel Food and Beverage Inc.
“We are the biggest consumer company in the Philippines. By doing this, we will be able to extract significant synergies and use their combined strengths to great advantage,” Constantino said.
San Miguel Foods and Beverage Inc. did an IPO in a bearish 2018 market. It quickly became the darling of the market. SMFB became more valuable than the mother company, SMC. SMFB’s market cap reached P496.37 billion, compared with SMC’s market cap of P404.11 billion. SMFB is the largest and most diversified food company in the Philippines.
San Miguel has invested $10 billion to modernize Petron Corp., the Philippines’ biggest petroleum refining and marketing company. It has a significant presence in Malaysia, with more than 600 retail stations. In the Philippines, it has more than 3,000 retail stations.
San Miguel’s power generating capacity reached 4,293 megawatts.
SMC is completing its 89.2-km Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway is nearly complete. It plans to extend TPLEX to be near Baguio.
Its 14.82-km Skyway Stage 3 (from Makati to Balintawak, connecting the South and North Expressways), 22-km MRT-7 (from Quezon City to San Jose del Monte, Bulacan), Boracay Airport expansion, and Bulacan Bulk Water Supply projects, are all on track.
Its newest infrastructure projects—the 58.09-km South East Metro Manila Expressway, or Skyway 4 (from FTI to San Jose del Monte, Bulacan); and the 56.86-km SLEX-TR4 (from Sto. Tomas, Batangas to Lucena) are in the early stages of development.
San Miguel is also modernizing the 52-ha. Manila North Harbor.
An absolute game changer is San Miguel’s plan to build a $15-billion brand new airport on 2,500 hectares in Bulacan, 17 minutes by Skyway from Manila. It will have four runways with plans for another two later; passenger terminals to serve 100 million, scalable to 200 million. It will also have a modern air cargo complex.
San Miguel is more than a manufacturing. It is an even bigger infrastructure company. Its infra portfolio is the largest in the country.
With 24 percent of the company, RSA increased the value of his holdings from $748 million in 2016 to $1.79 billion this November, a huge $1.042 billion or 139-percent jump.
Add the value of RSA’s 87 percent ownership of newly listed Eagle Cement Corp. (which had market capitalization P75 billion), and RSA is easily worth $3 billion, making him the seventh richest Filipino.
Tycoon Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. recruited RSA to SMC in January 1999. The conglomerate had lost its moorings. In 2002, RSA took active and aggressive management of SMC as its vice chairman, president and chief operating officer. Cojuangco told him to manage the behemoth as he deemed best.
“Ramon was a diamond in the raw,” says Danding with evident pride of his prized catch. The CEO says now he could not have found a better man to manage the company. And the rest is history.
Ramon Ang has transformed San Miguel in ways no one could have imagined or have done better. No Philippine company or conglomerate has transformed itself so dramatically and radically in the last decade as has San Miguel.
Even while growing and strengthening its traditional core businesses like beer, foods, and packaging, SMC went into petroleum refining and marketing, power generation, infrastructure, airports, mining, mass transit, and airline.
RSA disrupted the business of utilities, power generation, and infrastructure. SMC moved into these businesses far ahead of the others.
The sea change was so revolutionary and seamlessly successful it changed or disrupted the way business is done in the Philippines and in the region. It also gave San Miguel size, scale and sustainability that will make it extremely difficult for its rivals to catch up.
Between 1998 and 2017, the impact of San Miguel’s acquisitions and investments was spectacular.
