Global unrest spells opportunity

ICTSI, run by billionaire Enrique Razon, is one of a few Philippine companies to have become a successful global player and it has done so largely by boldly going where others may feel trepidation.

“What is happening in the Middle East, as far as it affects the global economy, has an impact, but in the long term I think it is a good thing,” Razon said at a recent stockholders’ meeting, outlining his company’s strategy.

“These countries who are toppling their dictators will need to restructure, go into privatization, open up their economies.

“There will be a lot of opportunities there, and that is our thrust.”

Aside from dominating in the Philippines, International Container Terminal Services Inc., manages ports in countries as diverse as Syria, Georgia, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Croatia, Japan, Brunei and Madagascar.

It has operations in the United States and China and has just signed a contract to manage a port in Tamil Nadu, India, which will give it a presence in 17 countries.

Its global expansion strategy helped give ICTSI a net profit of $98.3 million in 2010, up 79 percent from 2009, with all its overseas subsidiaries showing growth, according to Razon.

ICTSI sometimes takes over and manages an existing port but in other cases builds and develops the facility.

Company officials acknowledge that ICTSI is not in the same league as the global port handling giants, such as Hong Kong’s Hutchison Port Holdings and Singapore’s PSA International.

However, April Lee-Tan, chief researcher for stockbrokerage CitisecOnline, pointed out that no other Philippine company in any sector had set up operations in such a wide variety of countries as ICTSI.

“No one has gone to places like Madagascar. They’ve gone to places no one else would think of,” she said.

ICTSI senior vice president Ed Abesamis said the company’s origins in the Philippines, an extremely poor and corrupt country that has long endured political chaos, had prepared it to operate amid uncertainty overseas.

The company won its first major tender to manage the Philippines’ main container terminal in 1987 — one year after an uprising toppled longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Abesamis recalled.

At the time, Marcos’s successor, Corazon Aquino, was fighting off violent military coup-plotters, some of whom besieged her in the presidential palace and waged gun battles with loyal troops in the streets of Manila.

But the coup plots did not affect the port project and ICTSI management learned valuable lessons about doing business amid political chaos, according to Abesamis.

“In a sense, our officers and our board are not easily shaken by a disturbing political event. It might be looked at as a passing thing in which we could still do long-term business,” he said.

So far, ICTSI ports have not been seriously disrupted by various political crises around the world.

Its port in Georgia closed down for a week during the brief war between Georgia and Russia in 2008 but quickly resumed operations, according to Abesamis.

And its port in Syria has not been affected by the current deadly unrest there, he added.

Razon said that ICTSI was on the lookout for another opportunity overseas, and could spend more than the $456 million earmarked for capital expenditures this year if an opportunity arose.