A WHOLLY owned subsidiary of Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) has agreed to form a joint venture company that will own and set up at least 120 Jollibee stores in West Malaysia for the next 10 years beginning 2022.

West Malaysia covers the country’s capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Singapore-based JFC unit Golden Plate Pte. Ltd. and Beeworks Investment Pte. Ltd. have committed an initial investment of $8 million to the joint venture, up to $2.4 million of which will be contributed by Golden Plate.

Around 30% if the company will be owned by Golden Plate, while 70% will be owned by Beeworks Investment.

Beeworks Investment is majority-owned by Patrick Chong, who is also the franchisee of Jollibee East Malaysia, which is where Kota Kinabalu is.

“He has been a longstanding investor in Malaysia through his company, The Luxasia Group, an omnichannel leader in luxury beauty and lifestyle brands,” JFC said in a statement.

Excluding its stores in the Philippines, JFC currently has 885 stores in Southeast Asia. The company’s brands are present in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, which accounted for 6.7% of its global system wide sales.

“The creation of the joint venture for Jollibee West Malaysia will accelerate even more this growth and will help make Southeast Asia a more significant business for the JFC group,” Jollibee said.

Globally, JFC operates 17 brands in 33 countries through 5,816 stores.

JFC shares at the stock market rose 3.41% or P6.50 on Thursday to close at P197.00 apiece. — Keren Concepcion G. Valmonte

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