Philippine Billionaire Andrew Tan’s Emperador To Accelerate Global Expansion After SGX…

Emperador—controlled by billionaire Andrew Tan—will step up its global expansion, with an eye to boosting whisky and brandy sales in China and the U.S., following its secondary listing on the Singapore Exchange.

The company’s shares started trading on SGX today as the Philippine liquor giant seeks to broaden its investor base. The stock closed at S$0.45 after opening at S$0.435, with 6.2 million shares changing hands.

While Emperador didn’t raise fresh capital from the secondary listing, it will help the company boost its international presence, Kevin Tan, director of Emperador and eldest son of the company’s founder, told reporters in Singapore

“We want to conquer the world of single malt whisky and Spanish brandy,” Tan said, adding that the company is looking at opportunities in China, which is among its fastest growing markets.

With a market capitalization of about 274 billion pesos ($4.9 billion), Emperador’s Philippine-listed shares have retreated from its peak of 24.30 pesos a piece in February as the company reported flat net profit growth in the first quarter after surging 25% to a record net profit 10 billion pesos in 2021.

Despite the sluggish start of 2022, Emperador’s net profit will likely climb to another record high, Bryan Donaghey, head of Emperador’s whisky business, said. “Our global business continues to deliver sustained growth,” he said. With increasing demand in key markets such as China and the U.S., the company expects to generate 50% of sales outside the Philippines by 2025 from about 35-40% currently, he added.

Analysts believe that the secondary listing in Singapore will boost the stock’s appeal to international investors. “There might be a better appreciation of its international whisky business there,” April Lee-Tan, chief equity strategist of Philippine brokerage COL Financial, said.

The secondary listing is jointly managed by UBS AG and JPMorgan, whose mandate is to explore ways to boost the trading liquidity of the stock. “Emperador is really an international company,” Joey Roxas, president of Philippine brokerage Eagle Equities, said. “It will benefit from its listing on an international exchange. Its whisky products are known globally.”

Founded in 1979, Emperador is tycoon Andrew Tan’s first business before venturing into real estate. In the past decade, the company has grown to become the Philippines’ biggest liquor manufacturer with the acquisition of Whyte & Mackay—the world’s fifth largest Scotch whisky producer by volume—in 2014 and Spain’s Bodegas Fundador—the world’s No. 1 brandy maker—the following year.

Emperador is a subsidiary of Tan’s holding company Alliance Global, which has earmarked 60 billion pesos this year to expand its real estate, liquor and fast food chain businesses. Tan chairs Alliance Global, Emperador and Megaworld, which has built a portfolio of residential condominiums, offices, hotels, shopping malls and townships across the Philippines in the past three decades. With a net worth of $2.6 billion, Tan ranked No. 8 when the list of the Philippines’ 50 Richest was last published in September.