Philippine Billionaire Tony Tan Caktiong-Backed DoubleDragon Sees $8.5 Billion Sales By 2035

DoubleDragon—controlled by billionaire Tony Tan Caktiong and tycoon Edgar Sia II—aims to boost sales of the property developer twentyfold to 500 billion pesos ($8.5 billion) pesos by 2035 (from 25 billion pesos last year).

New shopping malls in the Philippines and hotels being built by unit Hotel101 in the country and overseas will help fuel the growth, and boost DoubleDragon’s net profit to 50 billion pesos by 2035 from 9.3 billion pesos in 2023, Sia, chairman and cofounder of DoubleDrgaon told shareholders in a speech on Friday.

DoubleDragon aims to grow its fledgling Hotel101 brand from over 1,000 rooms in two locations in Metro Manila to over 500,000 rooms across more than 100 destinations worldwide over the next decade, Sia told Forbes Asia in an interview published in February. It is bankrolling the development of its first three overseas sites in Japan, Spain and the U.S., while looking for potential partners—property owners who will sign management contracts or franchise agreements with Hotel101—across Asia, Europe and North America.

The company aims to “generate annual cash dividends exceeding 12 billion pesos, derived from revenues from various foreign [properties] flowing back to Philippine-listed DoubleDragon,” Sia said.

Properties in the Philippines, which include office buildings, hotels, shopping malls and warehouses, will “fully mature and reach optimal revenue generation” next year, Sia said. DoubleDragon currently has assets in 50 locations across the Philippines, with plans to expand into 32 more by 2035.

With the expected cash flow from these properties, Sia said DoubleDragon hopes to repay all its debts by 2035. The company had total debts of more than 64 billion pesos as of end-2023, according to Bloomberg data.

Sia’s entrepreneurial journey began in 1996, when, at age 19, he dropped out of architecture school to lead a group of classmates to build a hotel for business travelers in his hometown of Iloilo, an island in central Philippines. In 2003, he launched Mang Inasal, a barbeque chicken restaurant chain that he eventually sold to Tan’s Jollibee Foods, the country’s No. 1 fast-food chain.

With a fortune of $340 million, Sia ranked No. 39 when the Philippine rich list was published in August. Tan, who has a net worth of $2.9 billion, is No. 6.