Coronavirus-proofed: Max’s officers get pay hikes despite losses
The top management team of Max’s Group will get a five percent pay increase this year, despite the country’s largest casual dining restaurant chain on track to losing money for the first time in decades because of the coronavirus pandemic.
It also helps that the management team, led by chairperson Sharon Fuentebella and president/chief executive Robert Ramon Trota, belong to the two controlling families of Max’s.
According to a management report ahead of this month’s annual shareholders’ meeting, Fuentebella, Trota, fellow directors Carolyn Salud, Cristina Garcia, Dave Fuentebella, Jim Fuentebella, and chief operating officer Ariel Fermin are slated to receive this year a combined compensation package of P69.2 million from P65.9 million in 2019.
All other officers and directors are also on track for a slightly lower increase at 4.9 percent. In actual terms, the unnamed officers and directors will see their combined pay checks rise to P185.2 million from last year’s P176.4 million, Max’s said.
Max’s reported a P169-million loss for the first quarter of 2020, a stunning reversal of the P138 million profit the group reported in the same period last year.
This year’s first quarter and the projected second quarter losses, along with a slow re-start of the restaurant business for the third quarter, threaten to wipe out the P724 million net income that Max’s Group had posted in 2019.
The stock market was even more brutal for the share price.
Despite a 23 percent growth to 790 branches in 2019 from 639 stores in 2017, Max’s share price still headed south during the two years, before plunging to P4.70 by end-March, two weeks into the lockdown, from P26.70 in March 2017.
The stock was trading yesterday between P5.30 and P5.45.
Elizalde, post-fire, is made whole again
Fred Elizalde, the controlling shareholder and chairman of the Manila Broadcasting Corp., is literally having a new lease of life as he turns octogenarian this year.
According to the grapevine, MBC has already received P35 million in advance payments for the October 2019 fire that partially destroyed the dzRH radio station beside the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
The initial payments are more than P21.4 million book value of the property and equipment that MBC declared as “casualty losses” in its books.
Apparently the extra millions and the additional insurance coverage awaiting payment represent the damages being claimed by the country’s first radio station for “business interruptions.”
Despite the fire that knocked dzRH off the air for a number of days, parent MBC’s profitability still rose by a whisker, ending 2019 with P107 million net income against P105.6 million the year before.
...and so is Gatchalian
Hotel magnate William Gatchalian has so far received P785 million in insurance claims to rebuild his fire-damaged Manila Pavilion hotel.
According to regulatory disclosures, Gatchalian is claiming a total of P1.93 billion from an unidentified insurance company to cover the casualty losses and business disruptions caused by the March 2018 fire that damaged the lower floors and the casino area and adjoining restaurants of the landmark hotel fronting Rizal Park.
After the fire, Gatchalian engaged an appraisal firm, which placed the market value of the remaining property and equipment, excluding land, to only P294 million.
This means that should Gatchalian finally collect the P1 billion balance, the Waterfront hotel chain owner should be back in the money to even rebuild a spanking new hotel on the same site.
Money talks
• Former Maybank ATR Kim Eng Securities president Lorenzo Andres Roxas is set to join the Yuchengco group’s House of Investments as board director, vice Ermilando Napa.
• The fintech-oriented law firm of Mark Gorriceta has stricken off the names of Wirecard, Rappler and ABS-CBN stars from its list of proud, satisfied clients on its website.
• Equestrian Joker Arroyo, the daughter of late Sen Joker Arroyo with corporate lawyer Felicitas Aquino, has been stuck in a suburb of Paris since March, when the coronavirus pandemic virtually halted international air travel.
In any case, the Arroyo daughter seems to be enjoying her French interment, judging from her Instagram posts.
Heard through the grapevine
Former Comelec chairman Andres Bautista is refashioning himself as a human rights advocate marooned in the United States by tweeting support for Maria Ressa and ABS-CBN, where incidentally Bautista’s lone sister is a managing director, while slamming the Marcoses and the proposed Anti-Terror Act.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com