Meet Engineer Francis Lloyd Chua, chairman and chief executive officer of Premium Megastructures Inc. (PMI), which specializes in land developments, reclamations, construction of roads, ports, airports and bridges all over the Philippines. His preferred mode of visiting and checking on his projects is by helicopter to reduce travel time.
At 43, he is already thinking of retiring even as he recently lit up the Philippine business scene like a streaking comet with his left-field P510 million acquisition of two-thirds of investment holding company Asiabest Group International Inc. or ABG, formerly the AGP Industrial Corp. from Tiger Resort Asia Ltd. He plans to integrate all of his various business interests in infrastructure, shipping, logistics, real estate development, mining, manufacturing and, further into the future — robotics and technology, into another business entity, PremiumLands Corp., and do a backdoor listing.
In the process of consolidating all of his various business interests, Chua has chosen to open up to a select group of journalists to better allow the public and potential future partners and investors a glimpse of where he came from, what he has achieved in his short 43 years of existence and his future ambitious plans.
Among his bold plans in the next five years are participation in the Asian Development Bank’s ambitious five-year construction of the 32-kilometer Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge, mainly as an aggregates supplier and logistics provider. The ADB-funded bridge project will connect the province of Cavite to Bataan.
With the interlink bridge connection, Chua plans to develop the Bataan Freeport through his own 235-hectare Bataan Transshipment Hub project at an initial cost of $1.8 billion, all of which will finally create a strong economic corridor and trade hub comprised of the National Capital Region, Region 3 and Region 4A, commonly known as the Calabarzon.
This early, Engineer Chua revealed that part of his long-term plans for the Bataan Transshipment Hub may involve a joint venture with India’s Adani Group. He explained that he had reached out to several foreign business groups from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but so far only the Adani Group has expressed interest in “a deal both parties are eyeing.”
Additionally, Engineer Chua, through another corporation – Concrete Stone Corp., also plans to go into socialized housing by offering a precast construction option that will help fill the yawning need for low-cost housing priced at a still attainable cost of P1.2 million, for which he said there is an unfulfilled gap of nearly one million units.
All of Chua’s projects would need funding through the backdoor listing of ABG and which, in the future, would also involve a follow-on offering to raise funds for its socialized housing project under the Kabalayan brand, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of PLC.
On his own terms
Interestingly enough, according to Francis, even as a child he was determined to learn and do things on his own terms despite some unwanted consequences. At the precocious age of six years old he learned how to operate a forklift, resulting in an accident that resulted in the broken leg of his sister.
He is actually the youngest of four siblings, with an elder brother and two sisters. His father’s business was in the hardware and construction sector. At 16, he reveals, he was forced to help out in his mother and father’s construction business. However, he eventually decided to strike out on his own because of his divergent business ideas which included building a whole ecosystem.
Thus, he points out, he developed his own business empire funded by his own borrowings from banks. His elder brother has his own business. His father, he said, is now into agriculture and has learned from Chua’s own concept of building a whole ecosystem for new ventures.
Engineer Chua’s first big project involved the construction of a road in Guiuan, Eastern Samar which he bravely bid for under the first package of the US-funded Millennium Challenge Corp. project in Samar in 2012, even though his company was competing against more established and well-known construction firms.
His ace was that coming from the province of Leyte, he knew the terrain of the province more than any of his competitors. He admits that he indeed encountered difficulties in completing the project. But an invaluable lesson he learned was adapting his approach, and from construction he opted to become a supplier and logistics provider (resulting in the shipping, maritime logistics and delivery services business under the Industry Movers Corp). for the rest of the construction firms that successfully won the other package of the Samar road-building project. He, thus, eventually gained the friendship of his competitors instead of their ire, and helped him expand and grow his businesses.
Another project he also participated in, Chua said, was the construction of the Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway or CCLEX undertaken by the joint-venture of Spain-based Acciona Construction S.A, First Balfour Inc. and D.M. Consunji Inc., and was an unsolicited private-public partnership project proposed by the Pangilinan-led Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. Once again, Chua provided logistical and aggregates material support for the construction of the bridge. It also led to the continued collaboration of PMI with Acciona to this day.
Chua transferred his business and residence from Leyte to Mega Manila in 2016, and where he is now nearing completion of his PMI building in Makati.
Although he is now a father to two young boys and a daughter, he remains unmarried. This early he already brings his two young boys, who are nearing their teens, to work to expose them early, but he acknowledges that they may have their own interest, with one boy more interested in technology.
He also points out that he has appointed presidents to his other companies with some of his trusted associates being former classmates whom he met while earning his degree in engineering at the San Carlos University in Cebu. All these moves, he points out, are part of his goal to retire early and go into other ventures such as data centers and technology.
Thus, the comet FLC-43 is glowing bright and strong at this point in its journey in the business sphere, but is perhaps still destined to venture where other men dare not tread before looping back in the next 40 years or so, brighter and hotter as a full-fledged industrialist tycoon.
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