Listed Areit Inc.’s net income grew to P844 million in January to September on the back of the stable operations of its leasing portfolio amid the coronavirus pandemic. In a filing on Friday, the Ayala Land Inc.-backed real estate investment trust company reported that its revenues climbed by 3 percent to P1.4 billion, while its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization increased by 4 percent to P1.1 billion. Its acquisition of McKinley Exchange in February and the higher occupancy rate at Ayala North Exchange also lifted its rental income by 9 percent to P1.1 billion year-on-year. “Areit’s fundamentals remain strong and resilient, keeping its financial performance on track,” Areit President Carol Mills said. “We are also expanding our portfolio of leasing assets to seed the company’s future growth,” he added. Listed on the stock exchange in August, Areit used the proceeds from its initial public offering to purchase Teleperformance Cebu last month, and recently unveiled plans to acquire The 30th commercial development in Pasig City. Areit shares fell by 10 centavos or 0.39 percent to finish at P25.55 apiece on Friday.
A unit of listed First Gen Corp. is exploring small-scale liquified natural gas (LNG) solutions to speed up the introduction of this power source in the country as early as in the second half of 2022. In a disclosure on Friday, the Lopez-led energy company said subsidiary FGEN LNG Corp. was reviewing the viability of developing these solutions at the First Philippine Industrial Park (FPIP) in Santo Tomas town, Batangas province. FPIP could receive LNG via trucks and specialized insulated containers from its planned FGEN LNG’s interim offshore LNG terminal project in Batangas City, it added. “The project will allow FGEN LNG to be able to bring in a floating storage [and] regasification unit (FSRU) on an interim basis, and thus accelerate FGEN LNG’s ability to introduce LNG to the Philippines as early as Q3 2022 to serve the natural gas requirements of existing and future gas-fired power plants of third parties and FGEN LNG affiliates, such as FPIP,” the company said. First Gen shares decreased by 30 centavos or 1.04 percent to finish at P28.50 on Friday.
On the wall of my home office — which, since I live in a very small apartment, is also my kitchen and living room — I have a large calendar, to which I attach Post-It notes to remind me of things that need my attention in the next few days. There are so many notes there now, it looks like the damned calendar has grown feathers. My better half, who can occasionally match me for sarcasm, observed that at this point it could probably double as my Christmas decorations.
In sitting here pondering that mess, it struck me that it is a physical indicator that the tense, “life on hold” circumstances we have all experienced over the past seven-plus months are changing, or rather, have reached a point where they can change.
In my own case, just as an example, I have gone from having just enough activity to keep things ticking over (a situation for which I am eternally thankful to my patrons at The Manila Times) to having prospects for enough work to keep me busy for the next year, and then some: One big, immediate project — which has an insane deadline, so it’s slightly overdue already — two more within one of my favorite topic areas that are about to start, and the first hints of an opportunity to restart an important community project that was rudely interrupted by this accursed pandemic.
A couple of pieces of news on Friday seemed to suggest that the country in general is sensing change, too. The first was from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which recently conducted a follow-up to a study of the effects of the pandemic on micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that it first did a few months ago.
At that time, which covered the first couple of months of the pandemic and the government’s imposition of its alphabet soup of quarantine classifications to deal with it, the MSME sector was, not surprisingly, in dire shape. More than 70 percent of the country’s MSMEs reported that they had reduced operations or closed entirely; about two-thirds had temporarily or permanently reduced their workforces. Almost 90 percent of businesses reported revenue declines of at least 30 percent, and almost 60 percent reported earning no income at all during the strictest lockdown period from mid-March to the end of May.
Even more alarming, as of July, almost 80 percent of MSMEs reported they had either exhausted their cash and savings, or would do so within a month.
In its update, however, the ADB found that circumstances for MSMEs have improved remarkably. The number of MSMEs closed has fallen to about 9 percent, and as of August, the number of MSMEs that reported they would run out of funds within three months had sharply decreased, as well.
The other piece of news that caught my attention on Friday was a survey by Social Weather Stations (SWS) on public perceptions of the reliability of coronavirus case data provided by the Department of Health (DoH). That survey found that a plurality — about 39 percent — of people believe that case statistics are being “overreported,” or in other words, that the pandemic is not as serious as it is made to seem it is by official data. Another 23 percent believe the DoH figures “are about right,” while the remainder — although the news reports, which were presumably just repeating whatever SWS’ press release said, did not actually say so — apparently think the DoH may be lowballing the case statistics.
The rough conclusion to draw from these two news stories is that if consumers and businesses are not yet actually returning to normal activity, a significant number of them wish to do so, and are anticipating doing so. Bangko Sentral ng Piipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno made the same observation recently, although he used wonkier evidence, such as improvements in the country’s unemployment rate, trade balance and purchasing manager’s index, and said the economy is at an “inflection point.”
The good doctor is not wrong in the sense that we are definitely at a point of change, but calling it an “inflection point” implies a certain optimism that many may not feel is warranted just yet. I think “tipping point” may be more appropriate, because right now, we are as likely to fall into disaster as we are to resurrect some semblance of our old lives.
Within our little bubble here, at 9:57 a.m. on the last Friday of October, things do seem fairly positive. Business activity is visibly increasing, and while the pandemic is still far from under control, over the past couple of weeks there has been a clear deceleration in its spread; new cases have slowed from the 3,000 to 4,000 reported daily a month or two ago to about half that. Other broad indicators of economic activity, such as consumer prices and electricity demand, have ticked upward in recent weeks, as well.
If you turn off the news and attend to the personal affairs that are right in front of you, things very likely could look promising. And that’s a nice feeling. Believing that I might actually begin reducing the number of Post-Its on my wall without the interference of some uncontrollable outside force puts me in a good mood.
Take a peek outside, however, and that sort of belief is severely challenged, if not dashed entirely. As I am writing this, the country is facing the immediate threat of one and possibly two typhoons, barely a week after the destructive passage of the last one. While we seem to have kept the coronavirus from getting completely out of hand for the moment, the pandemic is as bad as it’s ever been in much of the rest of the world. The Philippines is hypothetically in a good position to protect itself from the latest surge in the spread of the coronavirus, but the push to “reopen” does not bode well for the country’s actually being able to do so. And if that’s not enough to worry about, we are just days away from a US election that will either herald the start of a global recovery or the destruction of civilization.
Not being able to really do anything about any of this, and not knowing which of the only two options available to us — either hunker down and wait for the storms to pass, literally and figuratively, or continue as though there is a future and hope for the best — is the right choice is maddening. We’ve gotten this far, and that’s good, but it’s not over yet, not by a long shot. Try to be smart and keep going, whatever path you’re following, apreciate the people around you, and wish each other luck. We’re all going to need at least a little.
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