ERIC T. FRANCIA President and CEO of AC Energy Holdings, Inc.

Aspire…believe…collaborate…and deliver - do these “ABCD word play” appear coming straight from the rulebook of a “search for a star” show?

Hold back and just don’t whittle it away yet – because in the real sense, this is a corporate deep dive into mainstream economics, infrastructure build-up strategy and technological innovation acuity for a sector known as the ultimate and best hope for economies to grow – that is energy.

On closer examination, the alphabet soup seems thriving just in the world of policy wonk and corporate nerds, but if likened to a “star power search” these are unfeigned core values that may well define who will emerge as the “ultimate winners” – differentiating them from the others who will just be labeled as: “the rest.”

The uncontrived twist to that is: the “aspire-believe-collaborate and deliver” catch-lines are actually the goal posts of AC Energy’s investment strategies and corporate values into achieving the targets cast on their project blueprints. In a nutshell, it encapsulates the “AC Energy Way” imprint of the company.

EXPANSION AC Energy is the Ayala conglomerate’s energy investment arm – which has been continuously advancing its investment expansion pitch not just in the Philippine market, but also offshore – with it already having its kick-off markets for renewable energy ventures in Indonesia, Vietnam and Australia.

“First of all, we aspire for goals that seem impossible to achieve…but it will first take some serious phase of believing that we can do things. Because if you don’t aspire and you don’t believe, you will not reach any target and you will not be able to deliver anything,” Eric T. Francia, president and chief executive officer of AC Energy has professed in a sitdown interview.

In that assertion, he takes credence on the fact that when AC Energy started in 2011, the four-man team whom he started with in the company actually charted a power capacity pathway that seemed to be in a “no win” situation.

From a zero capacity, “we put a stick in the ground and we said, we want to be relevant and we want to have a thousand megawatts in five years,” he narrated. True enough that those 1,600 megawatts of attributable capacity now stand as witness to that seemingly impossible dream.

Francia confessed though that “there had always been doubts”, but it was in those times that their grit and determination had been tested – and their desire to seize the impossible breakthroughs likewise strengthened.

The “C” in the Ayala strategy is collaboration – or the acquisitions and partnerships that they had sealed over the years as part of their capacity scale-up odyssey.

“This collaboration thing, it’s almost natural for us to partner. Other groups would prefer doing things by themselves because they care about control, simplifying things and making the call. But our culture is very different, we’re more on the partnership model – it’s not easy and it’s not for everyone,” he said.

Headlining partners to AC Energy are PHINMA Energy, GNPower, Aboitiz Power Corporation, UPC Renewables, BIM Group of Vietnam; and Indonesia’s Star Energy Group Holdings as well as Thailand’s Electricity Generating Public Company Ltd. in the Chevron geothermal asset buy.

SHIFTING STRATEGY The Ayala group wasn’t among the first-movers in the energy investments terrain. However, from the time that the company had its first acquisition in 2011 – starting at a modest capacity via the Northwind farm in Ilocos Norte, “we grew fast and we were able to scale that up around 20 times to where we are now,” Francia reckoned.

Amid their principals’ initial hesitation to invest in coal – since their initial acquisitions were in the RE development space, he considers the eventual spread of technology choice as a valuable part of the company’s “fascinating journey” into portfolio shoring up.

At first, he ruefully admitted that it wasn’t a very ‘comforting’ prospect for them to immediately plunge into coal-fired power investments, but realization came when the Philippine economy was literally screaming for capacity additions – back when supply shortfalls have been triggering consumer mayhem. “Once you’re already in the industry, you begin to appreciate it better. We quickly realized that the country needs reliable and affordable power -- and that’s being provided by coal since gas was not actionable then; and renewables were not at competitive price, they still needed de facto subsidy, so we thought we had to do something about it,” he stressed.

Despite the shoddy tag thrown a g a i n s t c o a l t e c h n o l o g y, t h e A C Energy chief executive defended “there is such thing as responsible coal generation – there’s clean coal technology that can address the carbon emission issues.”

On a more personal level, he admitted that coming from a seemingly different discipline of management consulting – and hurriedly cast in the very technical and complex world of energy, it wasn’t exactly a seamless career transformation for him.

“I was this corporate strategy guy who knew there was this opportunity in power, but I don’t really know the nuances. But the insight there is, once you’re in, you begin to live, breath and dream about power every night – so we quickly realized: we should challenge our old assumptions that thou shall not touch coal.”

And true enough that “dream” flourished – not just in the company’s power capacity build-up in the Philippines, but also the tempting offshore market opportunities that smashingly knocked at AC Energy’s doors.

First was what Francia considers an “opportunistic acquisition” in Indonesia when multinational energy giant Chevron Corporation divested its Asian geothermal assets. Then that overseas portfolio had grown further with wind power investment (also in Indonesia); next came the solar partnership venture in Vietnam and recently the varied RE technology prospects with that merger and acquisition deal in Australia.

Simultaneously, the company’s “shift in strategy” had also prompted the conglomerate’s sell-down of at least 50-percent of its thermal capacity in the Philippines. As of this writing, its chosen partner has yet to be announced.

Further, the company just recently unveiled also its newly designed “Vision 2025”, the RE-thermal power development milieu that will be balancing its technology preferences. That so far, had likewise driven AC Energy to modify and broaden its investment platforms – that from a purely holding company, AC Energy branched out into having its split investment vehicles for RE and thermal power projects; and parallel subsidiaries were also established for its domestic and international ventures.

“We are now looking at our 2025 vision, which is to exceed 5.0-gigawatt capacity,” Francia said. That basically entails capacity addition of 3,000 megawatts from the 2,000MW that the company has been targeting until year 2020.

He indicated that “the gap where we are today and that more than 5,000 megawatts is going to require over US$2.0 billion equity investments until 2025...my gut feel is that more than 50-percent will be international because we have more options and leverage in choosing which market to invest in,” as he contended that the Philippine power industry might remain a saturated market until years 2020-2022.

“Strategy does not necessarily come from big ideas. Sometimes, or a lot of times, it comes from what is happening in reality. You have to be sensitive to changes around; and adjust really, really fast. You have to be nimble and just don’t stick to your old assumptions,” he qualified. INCLUSIVE APPROACH With wider markets to serve ushered in by the company’s continuing investment expansions, AC Energy’s other to-do list shall be re-calibrating ‘skill set’ as well as the industry and management acumen of its people.

Francia describes his management style as “inclusive”; and by that, he means democratizing leadership and enticing subalterns to co-own responsibilities and targets.

The ‘top-down approach’ is seductive, he asserted, but taking it from practical run of things, it may not really be the strategy that will work especially in a corporate organization that is a quasi-start up and one that is still shaping up its culture, corporate values as well as goals.

“I don’t believe in top-down approach, like giving orders. I want people to commit, take a leadership role and co-own their responsibilities and deliverables not necessarily waiting to be told,” he stressed.

This C-Suite Ayala executive reckoned that the best outcome for a consensus-driven strategy is having the opportunity to lay down all the best ideas and arguments before an organization comes up with a decision on critical matters. And in cases where compromise seems intractable, Francia said that is the time he ponders on rendering “executive judgment.”

Like a tenured professor, he noted that he doesn’t mind extending management meetings if he can sense that intellectual debates or valuable ideas are still being discussed and fleshed out by his team.“I treat it like a case study and I would pause and say: that is a great idea and a food for thought. So I don’t really mind if we extend meetings by extra 15-30 minutes. Because in real life, you don’t have an opportunity to study and dissect a case, in this, we can discuss and scrutinize the nuances, so I am encouraging that kind of sharing of insights,” he said.

Broadened markets for the company similarly present substantive reason for it to innovate on its approach in organizational staffing – chiefly on its escalating offshore operations.

“Relative to the size of our goals, our teams are outsized. Definitely, we need more people – and equally important would be the kind of people who can really operate in an international environment – people who are mobile and comfortable dealing with international markets,” he emphasized.

SATURDATE When Francia started at the Ayala Group in 2009, he was given three core responsibilities - to head the Corporate Strategy of the conglomerate; and then its Infrastructure Group; and the third is the energy portfolio.

He had gotten out from the CS job in 2014; and had also handed over the infrastructure development segment to former Secretary Rene Almendras (who went back to the Ayala group after his government stint); hence, that left him with one full time job – which is the energy investment arm.

The AC chief executive laments though that he still need to have a firmer grasp on how to properly manage his time – in and outside of his corporate office.

“Unfortunately, I still need to master the art of not making the work to expand,” he said, while adding that “every time I create time or space in my life by cutting off some responsibilities or activities, the energy world gets bigger too.”

With an expanding organization under his charge, he knows it too well that it is another learning curve that he has to deliver on efficiently – not later but at the soonest time possible.

But if there is one schedule that you cannot snatch from this executive’s appointment book, it’s his “Saturdate” with his three-year old daughter. Bonding time for this dad-and-his princess are Saturday trips to their favorite recreation spot – the “Adventure Zone” in Bonifacio Global City.

And whoops, he shared a “little secret” on this father-daughter escapade -- that while the little one really enjoys the big slides at the romp, “I am also enjoying it,” he said jokingly.

By far, if there’s a side his weekend family time reveals, it’s his subdued persona, compared to the tougher figure that AC Energy employees encounter at that corner office.