MANILA — Jollibee Foods Corp will divest from PHO24 to focus on its chosen segments, which are chicken, coffee and tea, burger and Chinese cuisine, an official said on Wednesday.

"We believe at least for the next three years the segments we have chosen collectively provide somewhere between $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion US dollar of value...We are not the world's biggest company, we have our limitations and so in order to win it's really about focus and so we shall focus on these four segments," JFC Chief Financial Officer Richard Shin told reporters in a virtual briefing.

"I know that sounds incredible, it's a big number but if you think about coffee and tea, and I don't want to underestimate tea here, and you think about countries like China I think we can all understand that 'wow there's really a large value pool,'" he said.

The Philippines' largest restaurant operator earlier said it previously had a franchise agreement for the operation of PHO24 in the Philippines, which is now terminated.

"Because it doesn't fit into our strategy and because it's relatively a small brand for us we decided we would get a better return for shareholders and the company if we were to focus really our energies in our top brands such as Jollibee," Shin said.

"So we're extremely excited about our strong brands and we're very happy also to let go of brands that we believe are not going to be as competitive," he added.

• JFC to halt PHO24 operations in Philippines

INTERNATIONAL GROWTH

Aside from US and China, the "next big market" outside the Philippines is Vietnam, where Jollibee has 157 stores that are "extremely profitable," Shin said.

"Demographically very similar to the Philippines around 100 million people, median age very young, they economy is doing really well in terms of manufacturing and other forms of commerce so we look at a market like Vietnam although it's not as strategically important long term as the US and China but we do see this as a real proper market," he said.

He said JFC is also looking at expansions to other Southeast Asian markets where they are not yet present.

When asked if there are new acquisitions in the pipeline, Shin said it's "never say never."

"But we believe we have enough solid brands and we believe that these brands have not reached their peak yet so we have quite a bit of work to do ahead of us to really swept these assets as we say in finance but really to you know scale them and to build them and to make them operationally consistent and profitable so that's the journey we're on," he said.

Shin said the US offers the biggest opportunity in terms of the international market. JFC had always said its goal is to become one of the top 5 quick service restaurants (QSR) globally.

JFC acquired Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf as well as Smashburger in a bid to capture a wider market in the US, Shin said. He said they are also not venturing into fine dining, it just so happened that one of its brands, Tim Ho Wan has 1 Michelin star.

As of the end of January 2023, the JFC Group said its network stood at 6,481 stores globally.

• Jollibee named 'best fried chicken chain in America'
• Jollibee Group opens 500th store in mainland China

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