Facebook Instagram Linkedin Twitter Youtube
Home Blog Page 7085

Nissan seeks gov’t support in plan to bring in EVs

NISSAN PHILIPPINES, Inc. is planning to introduce its electric vehicle (EV), the Nissan Leaf, to the local market this year.

Nissan Philippines President and Managing Director Atsushi Najima said at an online press conference on Thursday that the company is still at the stage of educating the Filipino market about electric vehicles.

“We have customer needs already so that’s why we want to go with Leaf introduction within this calendar year,” he said.

Mr. Najima said the firm is working with government agencies for potential support as it imports electric vehicles.

“Originally, import duty of EV is some percentage, but for gasoline engine or diesel engine is much lower import rate so that’s why we are asking if future of mobility is the EV, can we get government support.”

The recently imposed additional safeguard duties on imported cars exempt electric vehicles.

Nissan Philippines announced that it will shut its Almera assembly in Laguna by March, and will continue to sell to the country through its regional network. Mr. Najima said that the closure is not related to the safeguard duties or the pandemic, but is part of a global restructuring plan announced last year.

“We announced globally in Japan in May 2020, so this means… thinking or analysis was done before. So that’s why this is before pandemic or before safeguards.”

The import strategy of the company this year, he said, will depend on the decision of the Tariff Commission on the potential retention of the safeguard duties.

Nissan shut its plant in Indonesia last year and plans to close plants in Spain. The Japanese automaker announced last year that it would cut 20% of its product lineup and annual production capacity.

Nissan sales in the country declined 49.1% to 21,751 units in 2020 as overall car industry sales plummeted during the lockdown declared to contain the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). — Jenina P. Ibañez

AC Energy raises nearly P5.4 billion in rights offer

AC ENERGY Corp. has raised around P5.37 billion from its stock rights offering that took place from Jan. 18 to 22, which the Ayala-led company said was fully subscribed and fully paid for.

During the five-day offer period, the company said it had sold a total of 2,267,580,434 common shares at an offer price of P2.37 per share to eligible stockholders of record as of Jan. 13, 2021.

Broken down, the first round allocation of the offering sold around 2.09 billion shares, while the second round saw over 172.68 million shares.

AC Energy previously said that the net proceeds of the offering will be used by the company “to partially fund the development of its various power projects, inorganic growth opportunities as they arise, and its other general corporate requirements.”

Three weeks ago, AC Energy moved the rights offer period for its stocks to an earlier date since its existing regulatory approval needed to be completed by January 2021. The previous opening date of its latest SRO was scheduled on the first work week of February.

The company previously said that its latest rights offering was exempted from the registration requirement of the securities code. Because of this, the offer shares are not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In another disclosure to the local bourse, the company’s parent firm Ayala Corp. confirmed that AC Energy’s top official Eric T. Francia was appointed to lead Ayala Corp.’s investments committee, which is in charge of reviewing and making recommendations on the firm’s portfolio strategy.

On Thursday, AC Energy’s publicly listed firm unit ACE Enexor announced in a separate regulatory filing that it had withdrawn from the consortium covering Service Contract No. 6, a petroleum block in northwest Palawan. At present, ACE Enexor holds 7.78% of participating interest in SC 6 Block A.

On Thursday, shares in AC Energy shed 9.2% to close at P6.02 apiece, while shares in its parent firm Ayala Corp. improved 3.29% to end at P800 apiece. ACE Enexor shares inched up 5.22% to finish at P13.30 apiece. — Angelica Y. Yang

Are you afraid of the dark?

Horror movie references curfews under Marcos’ Martial Law and COVID-19 lockdowns

WHAT would it be like living in Manila if, once midnight falls, no one is safe? That is the thesis of Dodo Dayao’s horror film, Midnight in a Perfect World, set to show on Upstream starting Jan. 29.

Starring Glaiza de Castro and Jasmine Curtis-Smith, the film is set in a dystopian version of Metro Manila where people mysteriously disappear during nightly blackouts at midnight. The two women and two of their friends (played by Anthony Falcon and Dino Pastrano) get caught in a blackout outside and must find a safe house to survive — only, the safe house they thought was safe, isn’t.

Though presented as a dystopian version of the Philippine capital, Mr. Dayao also said the film is an allegory on the Martial Law years under Ferdinand Marcos, and the present.

“I had a dream about this a few years ago,” Mr. Dayao told reporters in a Zoom press conference on Jan. 25, saying that while he was crafting a short film about living in today’s Philippines, he turned to that dream and decided to make it a full-length film referencing Martial Law and the current state of the country.

“When I remember that dream, what I associate with it were the curfews during Martial Law,” he explained.

During the Martial Law years (1972-1981), people who were found outside from midnight to 4 a.m. would be arrested and held in the nearest military camp overnight, with the chance of being held in prison if no valid or compelling reason was found for their being caught outside during curfew hours.

Similarly, the lockdowns imposed last year to curb the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the country introduced strict curfews in Metro Manila and other provinces. Ms. De Castro, during the press conference, noted that she was scared whenever the nightly COVID-19 curfews arrived because one of her friends was arrested for being outside 10 minutes after the curfew started.

“Martial Law for someone so young… came across as a ghost story,” Mr. Dayao said, noting that he was still very young during the Martial Law era.

“It may be a martial allegory but it is also a haunted house story,” he is quoted as saying in a press release.

Midnight in a Perfect World premiered last year during the QCinema International Film Festival. It was produced by Globe Studios and Epicmedia Productions, the same team that produced the Metro Manila Film Festival 2020 Best Picture Fan Girl, directed by Antoinette Jadaone.

Midnight will stream on Upstream.ph from Jan. 29 to Feb. 29. Tickets are available via bit.ly/midnightinaperfectworld.

Watch the film’s trailer here: (4) Midnight In A Perfect World Official Trailer – YouTube. — Zsarlene B. Chua

Listed IP E-Game transforms into fintech

LISTED IP E-Game Ventures, Inc. is changing its name to Oasis Financial Group Inc., as part of its plan to engage in the fintech (financial technology) business.

IP E-Game Ventures, which was formed to engage in the business of gaming, entertainment, and content distribution, among others, now wants to engage in the fintech business including banking and electronic payments, the listed company told the local bourse on Jan. 26.

It will likewise engage in venture capital investment, financing, P2P, remittances, and foreign exchange, among others.

The listed firm also used to engage in the business of hotel, tourism, leisure, food and beverage.

“The change in corporate name and purpose is in relation to the corporation’s plans to transform the company into a company engaged in financial technology,” it said.

The company said its new corporate name has yet to be approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission for availability.

In a disclosure on Thursday, IP E-Game Ventures confirmed that GMA Network, Inc., which has 3.52% stake in the company, is among its minority owners.

Also, GMA New Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of GMA Network, has 2.20% stake in IP E-Game Ventures.

“Both companies are minority shareholders of IP E-Game Ventures, and will be participating in its upcoming Annual Shareholders Meeting to be held this Feb. 16, 2021, where the new business direction of (the company) will be taken up and submitted for approval by the shareholders,” it said.

The listed firm recently announced that it had executed term sheets for the acquisition of 60% of the capital stock of Fastcash Remittance, Inc., and for a minimum of 47% up to 80% of the capital stock of I-Pay Commerce Ventures, Inc. — Arjay L. Balinbin

Twitter conversations on streaming service shows grew 184% in 2020

2020 was a year where everything changed, but as the old adage goes “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Fans of K-Pop groups, K-dramas, and local celebrities continued to talk about their idols and shows online via Twitter despite not having in-person concerts and movie experiences that year due to pandemic restrictions.

With the dearth of in-person entertainment last year, more people gravitated towards talking about entertainment online, with Twitter reporting 678 million “entertainment-related conversations” in Southeast Asia during the first quarter of 2020, according to a press release.

“2020 was a year of unexpected and unprecedented change in the entertainment landscape, but Twitter continued to play its part in keeping conversations thriving,” said Carl Cheng, head of entertainment partnerships, SEA and Greater China, in the press release.

“Even as parts of the world look towards recovery and easing of lockdown measures, entertainment will certainly remain a key part of our lives. As this year promises new reality TV, local dramas, award-winning films and more in 2021, Twitter is excited to see where the next big escape will take us,” he added.

Philippine conversation about celebrities, local TV, and movies dipped in 2020, but conversations about shows available on streaming platforms increased throughout the region, with 184% growth (Q3 2020 vs. Q3 2019) in the Philippines, according to Twitter.

Generating a lot of buzz in the country last year were Academy Awards Best Picture Parasite by Bong Joon-Ho, and locally, the sitcom The House Arrest of Us and romantic drama blockbuster Hello Love Goodbye, both of which star Kathryn Bernardo.

Conversations about shows on streaming platforms also recorded big spikes in the number of related conversations in the third quarter (Q3)of 2020 in particular concerning Netflix, iWant, and iflix.

“This clearly shows that streaming services played an integral role during the extended periods of social distancing,” the company said.

The Sunday noontime show ASAP Natin ‘To continued to drive conversations on Twitter despite the closure of its mother network, ABS-CBN, in July 2020 (it has since found new channels online to present the show). The Philippine adaptation of the Korean drama series Descendants of the Sun also trended on Twitter as people “shared their sentiments seeing their fave K-drama with a relatable local spin,” the company said.

Fandoms also continued the conversations about their favorite love teams and groups online, with the fans of the “MayWard” love team (actors Maymay Entrata and Edward Barbers) and the P-Pop (Pilipino Pop) group SB19 some of the more notable examples. — Zsarlene B. Chua

US comedy legend Cloris Leachman, 94

CLORIS LEACHMAN — WIKIPEDIA.ORG

LOS ANGELES — American actress Cloris Leachman, who won eight Emmys for her work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and other television programs as well as an Academy Award for The Last Picture Show, died on Wednesday at the age of 94, her representatives said.

Ms. Leachman’s publicist said in a statement that the actress died of natural causes at her home in Encinitas, California.

“It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time,” her manager, Juliet Green, said in a statement. “There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh till the tears ran down your face. You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of her unparalleled magic,” Mr. Green added.

Ms. Leachman, who appeared in three of Mel Brooks’ comic movies, kept acting regularly well into her 90s. She was a contestant on Dancing With the Stars at age 82 and appeared in the 2019 reboot of the comedy series Mad About You.

Two films that she made in 2019 and 2020 have yet to be released.

Mr. Brooks on Wednesday called her “insanely talented.”

“She could make you laugh or cry at the drop of a hat… Every time I hear a horse whinny I will forever think of Cloris’ unforgettable Frau Blücher,” Mr. Brooks wrote on Twitter, referring to her role in Young Frankenstein.

Ms. Leachman grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and studied under Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio in New York, where Marlon Brando was a classmate. Starting in the late 1940s, her early jobs included working on stage with Katharine Hepburn in As You Like It, as well as small roles in movies and live television dramas.

One of her first regular jobs was playing the mother on the popular Lassie show in the late 1950s and television would provide many of Ms. Leachman’s greatest successes. She won best-supporting actress Emmys in 1974 and 1975 for playing the nosy landlady on the popular Mary Tyler Moore Show, which led to a two-year run for Leachman in her own spin-off series, Phyllis.

She also won Emmys for playing cranky Grandma Ida on Malcolm in the Middle in 2002 and 2006, as well as roles in the drama Promised Land in 1998, a Screen Actors Guild variety show in 1984, a 1975 appearance on Cher’s variety show and A Brand New Life, a 1973 television movie.

She was nominated 12 other times and also won a Daytime Emmy in 1972.

Ms. Leachman’s movie work also was distinguished, highlighted by The Last Picture Show in which she played Ruth Popper, the emotionally crippled wife of a small-town football coach who has an affair with one of his players. As director Peter Bogdanovich predicted, she won an Oscar for the role.

Ms. Leachman made an impression in three of Mr. Brooks’ movies, playing comically villainous characters in Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety and Madame Defarge from A Tale of

Two Cities in History of the World: Part 1.

Age did little to slow Ms. Leachman. In 2008, she became the oldest contestant ever — and a fan favorite — on Dancing With the Stars and followed that up with an appearance on the reality show Celebrity Wife Swap.

Ms. Leachman took a light-hearted and unpredictable approach to life. A lifelong vegetarian, she was in her 70s when she appeared nude — but with her body painted with fruits and vegetables — on the cover of Alternative Health magazine in 1997.

Asked in 2010 how she managed to keep professionally busy at her age, Ms. Leachman told the New York Times, “I don’t like that word ‘busy’ because that’s not how I live at all … When I do work, it’s not work; it’s great fun and exciting and fresh.”

Ms. Leachman and director-producer George Englund married in 1953 and divorced in 1979. They had five children. — Reuters

SMC starts work on road linking Skyway 3, NLEX Connector

SAN MIGUEL Corp. (SMC) has started work on its 1.2-kilometer road project that will link the newly opened Skyway Stage 3 to the NLEX (North Luzon Expressway) Connector being built by Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC), its top official said.

“The connection, part of the detailed engineering design of the Skyway 3 project, can be completed within 24 months or less as soon as the ROW (right of way) issues with the landowners are resolved,” SMC President and Chief Operating Officer Ramon S. Ang was quoted as saying in an e-mailed statement.

He said the company would start working in areas that are “unobstructed.”

“We’re also already committing the funds needed to buy the ROW properties, so hopefully, these issues will be resolved the soonest,” he added.

The NLEX Connector Road project is the eight-kilometer toll road linking the tail of NLEX Harbor Link Segment 10 at C3 Road in Caloocan City to Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Sta. Mesa, Manila.

MPTC’s NLEX Corp. and the Department of Public Works and Highways are currently working on the first five-kilometer section of NLEX Connector from Caloocan Interchange, C3 to España.

The NLEX Connector project is expected to reach España “by yearend,” according to NLEX Corp.

Once completed, the project is expected to cut travel time from NLEX to South Luzon Expressway from two hours to about 20 minutes.

MPTC is the tollways unit of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., one of three key Philippine units of Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd., the others being Philex Mining Corp. and PLDT, Inc.

Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has a majority stake in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls. — Arjay L. Balinbin

Fiennes, Mulligan unearth treasures in The Dig

CAREY MULLIGAN helps unearth a trove of ancient treasures in The Dig but one excavation stunt terrified the actress during filming — ensuring co-star Ralph Fiennes did not suffocate while buried in mud.

Based on the book by John Preston, the Netflix film, released on Friday, recounts the 1939 Sutton Hoo archaeological discovery, described by Britain’s National Trust as a find that “would revolutionize our understanding of early England.”

Set at the onset of World War Two, it follows Edith Pretty, a widowed landowner in the eastern county of Suffolk, as she employs amateur archaeologist Basil Brown, played by Fiennes, to excavate mounds on her property both suspect are Viking burial grounds.

Instead, Brown unearthed the shape of a 27-meter long Anglo-Saxon ship with a burial chamber filled with treasures.

Ms. Mulligan, known for Far From the Madding Crowd and The Great Gatsby, said she had not been looking for another period drama role but was moved by the script and keen to work with Schindler’s List actor Fiennes.

That came with great responsibility. In one scene, Brown is buried under thick mud when a trench he is excavating collapses. Pretty, played by Ms. Mulligan, uses her bare hands to dig him out. “(I felt) terror. Ralph didn’t want to use a stuntman, which I totally get, but it just did leave me with the terrible task of trying to stop him from suffocating,” Ms. Mulligan told Reuters.

“I was in charge of his face. I felt like if I’d been in charge of any other part of his body, I would have been fine. But I kept on saying to (director) Simon (Stone), please don’t put me in charge of his mouth … I’m going to mess it up and he’s not going to be able to breathe. So it was really stressful.”

Mr. Fiennes came out unscathed.

Adding a sense of authenticity, Mr. Stone asked the crew to bury mock-up treasures to replicate the excitement around the original discovery.

“We buried the treasure that they find and we hid it from them … And so they went on a treasure hunt,” he said. “It took hours and we were just rolling and rolling and rolling and sometimes there’d be long periods where no one found anything.”

Mr. Fiennes actually unearthed some medieval pottery while digging on set outside London.

“It was like a bit of clay,” he said, adding he hoped audiences would be inspired by the film’s small details.

“We live in a world of mass production … some of these (Sutton Hoo) treasures … are stunning pieces of craftsmanship. And that is a cause for wonder.” — Reuters

Cold storage demand, e-commerce to drive logistics — JLL

THE demand for cold storage facilities from the roll-out of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines and the rise of e-commerce during the pandemic is seen to drive up the logistics sector for the next 10 years, a real estate services firm said on Thursday.

“Rising cold storage and growing e-commerce landscape would drive take-up upwards… We anticipate that more interest would be in the logistics sector, (and this) would further drive the market moving forward,” JLL Manila’s Head of Research & Consulting Janlo delos Reyes said during a briefing on Thursday.

Data from JLL showed that logistics, driven by cold storage demand and the growth of e-commerce, would bring in gross leasable area of 3.5 million square meters (sq.m) by 2030, up from 1.5 million sq.m in 2020.

In JLL’s previous outlook in August, the real estate services provider said that addressing the increasing demand for better facilities in the country’s logistics space could translate to around 160,000 sq.m per annum of new demand.

“We’re also seeing a lot of diversification in the logistics space. We’re seeing an increased interest for data centers who can support this interest and take up for logistics space in the Philippines,” Mr. Delos Reyes said.

During the briefing, JLL also gave its overall outlook on residential, retail and the hospitality segments.

For the residential segment, it projected that developers would focus on existing portfolios, and undertake a limited number of project launches. It added that lease and sale markets would recover at a slower pace.

Although the retail market would see a growing presence of retailers and mall operators online, JLL said that retailers would reassess footprints and optimize margins, which would lead to a subdued demand in the sector.

For the hospitality sector, JLL said that travel restrictions in the country due to the global health emergency would prolong low occupancy levels.

Recent data from JLL showed that the influx of returning overseas Filipino workers for the holidays and the re-opening of hotels for staycations improved demand in the fourth quarter. But occupancy growth remained weak on a year-on-year basis. — Angelica Y. Yang

BPI posts lower profit in 2020 on increased loan loss reserves

BANK OF THE Philippine Islands (BPI) saw its net income drop by 25.7% last year as it set aside bigger loan loss provisions, with the coronavirus pandemic continuing to affect the economy.

The Ayala-led bank’s net profit went down to P21.4 billion in 2020 from P28.8 billion in 2019, it said in a disclosure to the local bourse on Thursday.

This translated to a return on equity of 7.7%, down from 10.97% in 2019, while return on assets stood at 0.98%, lower than the prior year’s 1.38%.

BPI attributed the income decline to higher provisioning for credit losses on expectations that the economy’s slowdown would lead to higher nonperforming loans (NPL). Its loan loss reserves stood at P28 billion last year, five times as much as the P5.6 billion it set aside in 2019.

Meanwhile, its NPL ratio stood at 2.68%, higher than the end-2019 level of 1.66%, based on its annual report for that year. Its NPL coverage ratio was at 115.2% last year, up from the end-2019 level of 102.1%.

BPI’s revenues climbed by 10.5% year on year to P101.9 billion in 2020. Its net interest income grew by 10.2% to P72.3 billion on the back of a 5.8% increase in its average asset base and a 14-basis-point rise in net interest margin to 3.49%.

Non-interest income also went up by 11.1% from a year ago to P29.7 billion on bigger gains from securities trading. This, even as income from fees fell 5% to P19.5 billion.

The bank’s operating expenses were almost steady at P48.1 billion last year, but its cost-to-income ratio improved to 47.2% from the 52.4% seen in 2019.

BPI saw a 4.6% drop in its loan portfolio to P1.4 trillion last year “as a result of a slowdown in corporate lending.” The main contributors to the decline were the mortgage and microfinance loan segments, it said, which expanded by just 6.6% and 5.7%, respectively.

Meanwhile, deposits with the bank edged up by 1.2% year on year to P1.7 trillion. The bank said the 16.6% growth in current account, savings account or CASA deposits partially offset the 33.2% decline in time deposits. BPI’s CASA ratio stood at 79.6% last year, while its loan-to-deposit ratio was at 82%.

BPI’s assets grew by 1.3% to P2.2 trillion at end-2020. Total equity was a P279.8 billion, translating to a common equity Tier 1 ratio of 16.2%, up from 15.17% in 2019 and a capital adequacy ratio of 17.1%, also higher than the prior year’s 16.07%.

Shares in BPI closed unchanged at P83.15 apiece on Thursday. — BML

Cannes Film Festival postponed due to COVID-19

THE 2021 edition of the Cannes Film Festival will be postponed until July because of the coronavirus pandemic, organizers said on Wednesday.

Last year’s event was canceled and replaced by a low-key event in October showcasing short films but without the A-list movie stars, directors, and producers.

The festival will take place from July 6-17, the organizers said in a statement, two months later than planned.

Hollywood superstars normally flock to the Mediterranean town’s “Croisette” promenade for the two-week extravaganza, the world’s biggest cinema showcase and a major market for the industry.

The palm-fringed town has been a subdued version of its normally glamorous self since the coronavirus outbreak. Many of its swankiest hotels are closed, as are its restaurants and bars. — Reuters

Cirtek gets PSE approval for listing of preferred shares

CIRTEK HOLDINGS Philippines Corp. has secured approval from the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) for the listing of its preferred shares, the listed company said on Thursday.

In a disclosure, the listed company said the PSE on Jan. 20 permitted the listing of its $20 million US-dollar denominated preferred B2-B shares issued to Camerton, Inc. by way of private placement.

The preferred shares will be listed with the PSE on Feb. 2, it added.

“The company has complied with all post-approval requirements for the listing of the shares subject of the private placement transaction,” the disclosure said.

“On December 2, 2020, the Board of Directors of Cirtek approved the initial dividend rate of the preferred B2-B shares at 6% per annum,” it added.

In early January, the $20 million US dollar denominated preferred shares of Cirtek was one of the offerings mentioned by PSE President and Chief Executive Officer Ramon S. Monzon that were in the pipeline for 2021.

“We have a number of follow-on and stock rights offerings in the pipeline, which include $20 million and $250 million dollar denominated securities (DDS) offerings of Cirtek Holdings Philippines Corp. and Cebu Air, and the P5-billion stock rights offering (SRO) by AC Energy Philippines,” Mr. Monzon said in a statement in early January.

CIrtek Holdings is the holding company of Cirtek Electronics Corp. and Cirtek Electronics International Corp., and is engaged in the business of manufacturing semiconductor packages, among others.

On Thursday, Cirtek shares at the stock exchange were flat at P7 per piece. — Revin Mikhael D. Ochave

1...7,0847,0857,086...12,774Page 7,085 of 12,774
© 2024 BusinessWorld Publishing.
All rights reserved.
Read our privacy guidelines
Facebook Instagram Linkedin Twitter Youtube