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By Likha C. Cuevas-Miel and Darwin G. Amojelar, Reporters
TWO more companies that had planned to go public
this year have deferred their maiden share sale, preferring to wait
for financial markets to calm down.
On the sidelines of an investors’ briefing,
Ramon Ang, San Miguel Corp. president, told reporters that the
conglomerate’s packaging unit postponed its initial public
offering (IPO) to early next year.
“If you notice, no one is going public today.
We will prepare all the groundwork for our packaging [business] but
[it is] most probably by the second quarter next year,” Ang said.
Separately, Roberto Dispo, First Metro
Investment Corp. (FMIC) executive vice-president, said Cebu
Pacific’s IPO has been deferred until market conditions improve.
FMIC, along with ING Bank N.V., are the airline company’s domestic
underwriters, while UBS AG is the lead manager for the offering.
“Well the strategy is to be opportunistic. We
look at the market situation as it evolve[s] and if there is a
window to do it within the year, that’s an option,” Dispo told
The Manila Times on the sidelines of a seminar for business
reporters.
San Miguel was supposed to sell to the public
for the first time the shares of its packaging and beer brewing
businesses but financial markets worldwide became very volatile
starting July when the US subprime mortgage problem degenerated into
a credit squeeze that is still felt this year.
The only local company to brave the volatile
markets this year was Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines Inc., which
was forced to slash its share offer price to entice risk-averse
investors. Even with the price cut, the soft drink maker met with a
cold welcome from the market.
San Miguel Brewery Inc. (SMB) is in the same
boat as it tightened the price range last Friday by lowering the
maximum from P15 per share to P11 while retaining the minimum at P8
apiece. In the preliminary documents submitted to regulators, SMB
originally set the price range at P9.50 to P16.30 per share. The
price for the shares on offer will be set on April 24 after its
international road show.
A maximum of 1.55 billion shares will be
available to investors to raise about P17 billion in gross proceeds.
Of the total, 1.394 billion shares held by the parent company will
be sold to generate funds to pay down its existing debts.
SMB also canceled the offering to US investors
due to a feared recession. The beer brewer would instead focus on
Asian and European markets where it can sell about 70 percent of the
total number on offer.
For its part, Cebu Pacific was supposed to list
on February 8 this year, with the budget airline planning to sell
shares for P95 apiece and raise as much as P13.39 billion from IPO.
The company had planned to use the proceeds to fund its capital
requirements up to this year.
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