Barbecue chicken seller turns tycoon with a 2,500% stock surge

MANILA (Feb 2): It’s been a fast ascent for college dropout Edgar “Injap” Sia, who less than a decade ago was selling barbecue chicken in the Philippines. He now leads the real estate developer with the best stock gains in Asia.

His company, DoubleDragon Properties Corp., went public in the Philippines in 2014 and has surged 2,500% since it began trading in April that year through Jan. 31, beating 460 other Asian developers worth at least US$500 million ($707 million). That surge has inflated DoubleDragon’s market value to 115.1 billion pesos ($3.3 billion), propelling it to the nation’s top five developers even though it owns and manages a fraction of the real estate held by its rivals.

Sia was studying architecture when he dropped out at 19 to start a business venture with classmates. Now 40, Sia ranks among the youngest tycoons in the Philippines. In 2003, he started a chicken shop in Iloilo City before turning it into a nationwide chain that overtook McDonald’s Corp. in store count in 2010. That year, he sold his Mang Inasal chicken chain to Jollibee Foods Corp., and later partnered with its founder Tony Tan Caktiong and with SM Investments Corp., owner of the nation’s largest retailer, to venture into property and malls.

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