Siam Cement Group (SCG) has earmarked 200-250 billion baht for a new five-year investment budget starting next year and is eyeing investment in a tech company in Europe.
Mr Kan says a yet-to-be-named European tech company could complement SCG's core businesses.
Chief executive and president Kan Trakulhoon said the final amount was likely to surpass that of the five-year budget ending this year.
The last time around, it was 250 billion baht including mergers and acquisitions (M&As). This time extra funds could be sought from the board for large deals on a case-by-case basis.
Over the next five years, SCG will move towards becoming a technology-driven firm.
"The company we're talking with at the moment is a technology company in Europe. We're looking outside the region because there's no technology development in Asean," Mr Kan said.
The focus will be technology related to core businesses such as material sciences, paper and petrochemicals.
As technology is a new area for the company, SCG has prepared in advance to ensure it understands the nature of the business and how to manage a main asset, intellectual property.
The company spent more than 2 billion baht last year on research and development and this year expects to spend the same on R&D to achieve its goal of moving towards high-value-added (HVA) products that generate far higher margins.
HVA has provided a net contribution to sales of 28% and commodity products 18%. For total group sales, HVA represents 30%.
"I set a target for HVA of 50% of total sales in 2015, but we won't make it, as the distressed assets we bought were all producing the commodity products," Mr Kan said.
"Hence, it dragged down the HVA percentage against commodities but only for Thailand, where we already achieved targets."
He admitted technology-driven business had become a contentious issue among companies in developed countries, as only 5% of patents worldwide had created economic value, while the rest were left on the shelf.
"I think we have to be gradual and patient in development," Mr Kan said.
Between 2011 and the end of this year's second quarter, SCG acquired 58 companies, half of them local, paying a combined total of US$2.15 billion.
As for the greenfield and brownfield investment projects costing a total of $2.65 billion in the same period, these include a new petrochemical project in Vietnam — with financial costs and other details to be settled in next year's first quarter — and four new cement plants with combined annual capacity of 6 million tonnes.
"The next five years will see more greenfields and brownfields than M&A deals, as there are not many distressed assets left in the market for us to buy," Mr Kan said, adding that the next M&A deals would be solid assets.
The petrochemical business will remain the core revenue generator this year, benefiting from the current high spread between feedstock and final product.
SCG's other businesses face hard times amid shrinking consumption in the domestic market. The company has turned to shipping abroad to maintain revenue and capacity use. Stepping up exports poses its own risks. To win on currency exchange, SCG policy is to hedge 50-70% of its net foreign currency exposure.
The company has set a sales target of 480 billion baht this year. First-half revenue totalled 255 billion baht for a net profit of 16.9 billion.
Siam Cement shares (SCC) closed on Wednesday on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at 432 baht, unchanged, in trade worth 350 million baht.