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big natural resource investments abroad as part of an increasingly
aggressive expansion outside of its core brewing business. "It does
not matter where, as long as it is viable and is a big company with
big volume, we will be interested in investing in coal companies, (
and) for oil and gas," San Miguel president and chief executive Ramon
Ang told AFP. In an interview, Ang said Southeast Asia's largest food
and beverage company was also looking to invest in more major
infrastructure projects in the Philippines, including toll roads and
airports. Ang has over the past year led the domestically listed
firm's diversification drive with multi- billion-dollar acquisitions
in local power firms, oil refining and retailing, telecommunications
and toll roads. Last month San Miguel won the right to sell power
from the country's largest coal-fired plant, with a capacity of 1
,000- megawatts, and bought a 620- megawatt power plant on Manila
Bay for a combined 1.085 billion dollars. The investments outside of
its core brewing, food processing and packaging businesses offered
high-growth opportunities and a hedge against economic downturns,
according to Ang. "You can't have all your eggs in one basket in case
there's a downturn," he said. Ang spoke enthusiastically about San
Miguel's global ambitions, although he would not give any specific
details about where the company was hoping to invest. "We are
leveraging left and right. I hope we can buy some good oil fields,
gold mines or gas fields... something that will propel the company, "
Ang said. San Miguel this year expressed interest in acquiring a
stake in top Indonesian coal miner PT Adaro, but then pulled back from
the deal, saying the stake offered was not big enough. Domestically,
Ang said San Miguel planned to build its infrastructure portfolio,
after recently taking a 35- percent stake in Private Infra Dev
Corp., which will build a 312- million-dollar toll road in the
northern Philippines. He said the company would make a bid to extend
an existing toll road linking Manila with the northern provinces,
called the North Luzon Expressway. "We (also) hope to develop more
new, major airports to help our country," he said, but declined to
give details. Ang said San Miguel would likely not exercise an option
to acquire a 51- percent stake in a holding company that controls top
Philippine oil refiner Petron until next year. "Because we can use
our money for a lot of other things beforehand," he said. In the same
interview, San Miguel chief financial officer Ferdinand Constantino
told AFP the big- ticket acquisitions had been safely financed by a
combination of equity and debt. "I think it's really moderate
leveraging. We have our own cash and borrowings, and we are very
conservative when it comes to borrowing," Constantino said.
