SMC’s phenomenal Ramon S. Ang
If there is going to be a contest as to who has been the most successful business magnate in the Philippines in the last 10 years, I am very positive that San Miguel Corporation’s Ramon S. Ang or RSA would win it hands down. Henry Sy is the owner of the SM empire. Nobody questions his orders. He has an amazing daughter, Tessie SyCoson, who is the most dynamic female business taipan in the country today. RSA stands and works almost alone. John Gokongwei owns JG Summit. No one dares to oppose his decisions. And he has a terrific son, Lance, who runs Cebu Pacific with impeccable excellence. RSA has no daughter or son in SMC to watch his back and hold his hand in making earthshaking decisions that affect thousands of employees, investors, and many other stakeholders. RSA is phenomenal.
I worked for SMC for 12 years under Don Andres Soriano III. At that time in the 80’s and 90’s, SMC was all beer, a little of packaging, and some startup of food and livestock. But under RSA, SMC has been transformed into a vast and wide array of investments portfolios that includes oil, real estate, foods, drinks, airports, highways, and power. For a while PAL was bought but was resold to Lucio Tan for strategic reasons. But SMC earned tremendous profits from that short-term transaction. I heard that soon, The Inquirer and Channel 7 are going SMC’s way. In the last 10 years alone, RSA embarked on diversifying its investments and acquisitions that increased stockholders’ value a thousandfold. No other business tycoon has achieved that feat. Not even Ayala, Tan, or Gokongwei.
Under RSA, SMC sales comprise no less than five percent of the entire Philippines’ GDP. No other firm can claim that. SMC’s assets expanded geometrically almost four times over from P340 billion in 2008 to P1.2 trillion in 2013, in a matter of five years. SMC’s sales rose tremendously almost five times, from P184 billion to P800 billion. Equity more than doubled, from P168 billion to P366 billion. Only RSA could do that. In 2008, the highest annual profit so far was P19.34 billion annually. In 2008, it rose to an amazing P50.72 billion. From November 2015 to November 2017 alone, the share price of SMC rose between 42 and 55 percent. That is difficult to surpass, not to mention even duplicate. According to BizAsia, in terms of earnings before interests, taxes and depreciation or EBITDA, SMC is easily valued at P480 per share. That means that SMC is valued at P1.141 trillion in terms of the value of its cash flow earnings.
SMC under RSA has become the country’s largest corporation in terms of sales and profits. Not even SM, JG Summit, or Ayala can beat that. And considering that RSA personally owns 20.3 percent of the whole SMC, that means that RSA is worth no less than P231.8 billion himself or $4.5 billion. But RSA is not just SMC. He owns 86 percent of Eagle Cement which has a market capital of P74.8 billion. That means RSA has another wealth of P64.75 billion or another $1.27 billion. RSA has a lot of other assets but counting his SMC and Eagle Cement shares alone, he would become the second richest man in the Philippines next only to Henry Sy. But RSA and SMC pay more taxes and help more people. At the end of the day, what matters most is that RSA has transformed SMC from a mere beer firm to the country’s leading private enterprise partner, employing hundreds of thousands and helping build a better nation for all Filipinos to be happy about and truly proud of.