UNIVERSAL ROBINA Corp. (URC) is earmarking over P8 billion for its 2025 capital expenditures (capex) to sustain growth, the company’s president said.
“We expect to be steady in our capex investments. In the past few years, we’ve been spending capex somewhere between P8 billion to P10 billion, including some landbanking for future growth opportunities,” URC President Irwin C. Lee told reporters on the sidelines of the Business Manual CEO Awards 2025 in Taguig City late Monday.
Mr. Lee said URC is eyeing to record single-digit growth in top line and bottom line for this year, as the company is “cautiously optimistic” about its financials.
He added that URC is expected to see “good profit growth” as the company works to recover margins and deal with high prices of inputs due to inflation.
“We’re looking for about mid-to-high single-digit top line growth. That will be driven by the return to growth in the Philippines, but also a continuation of our very good growth internationally. We’ll continue to see good profit growth. We’re going to accept a profit growth that is a few points behind top line growth,” he said.
“A lot of us are sort of very cautiously optimistic. The past three years have been a period of high inflation and therefore high price increases, which have been passed on to the consumers. We’re beginning to see the impact of that over the last year and a half or so,” he added.
With this, Mr. Lee said that URC is focusing on resuming volume growth, led by bolstering the value of its products as well as investing in new infrastructure.
“We’re focusing on best-value interventions, giving more value to the consumers, whether that’s in the form of better prices or just better offerings to consumers,” he said.
“We’re doing a lot of expansions in our infrastructure and capacity. We’re opening up some new factories and some infrastructure developments in the Philippines as well as outside of the country. The combination of these efforts will hopefully lead us to better volume growth,” he added.
However, Mr. Lee said that URC remains affected by inflationary pressures, which resulted in higher prices for its products.
“There are still selected commodities and ingredients that still have high inflationary pressure. Some of those still need to be addressed, both by internal cost savings and with some very selective pricing moves,” he said.
“But seeing what has happened over the last two to three years, I think those will be a little bit more muted and more deliberate in how we execute those so that the priority continues to be top line growth,” he added.
Mr. Lee said the company is also seeing a boost from the elections.
“We generally would expect some degree of help from the elections. Historically, there’s always been a bump whenever there’s an election year,” he said.
“We’re very strong in ready-to-drink with C2. We have a good water business. We have some ready-to-drink chocolates. We have good ready-to-drink coffee. We’re also number one in snacks. We’re strong in biscuits and some confectionery,” he added.
For the first nine months, URC saw a 17.6% drop in its attributable net income to P8.02 billion while sales improved by 1% to P118.88 billion.
URC shares fell by 1.07% or 70 centavos to P64.80 apiece on Tuesday. — Revin Mikhael D. Ochave
