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SKY Vision Corp. has bought out its joint venture partner in
Pilipino Cable Corp. (PCC) in preparation for its maiden share
offering to the public, an executive said.
On the sidelines of Benpres Holdings Corp.’s
stockholders’ meeting, Eugenio Lopez 3rd, Sky Vision director and
ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. chairman, told reporters that the cable
company decided to buy out Martin Lorenzo in PCC so that the company
can merge with Sky Vision’s subsidiary, Sky Cable.
Sky Vision paid P900 million for the 47-percent
Lorenzo-owned in PCC. Apart from the cable TV industry, Lorenzo also
has interests in the restaurant business under flagship Pancake
House Inc.
“We have to review [the initial public
offering timing] but everything is done now. In Sky Cable we have
completed our debt-to-equity restructuring and then we bought out
our minority partner in PCC. So we’re now in position to take it
public,” Lopez said.
The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.
earlier said it is pulling out of Sky Cable.
Sky Vision opted to buy the Lorenzo stake
because “we want to go public with a much larger [scale] because
we could not effect the economies of scale by merging PCC with Sky
Cable because they [Lorenzos] do not want it. We can have one back
office instead of having several back offices around the country.
We’ll just centralize it,” Lopez said.
However, Sky Vision’s plan to sell shares for
the first time to the public may have to be deferred indefinitely
due to the volatile financial markets. Proceeds of the initial
public offering would go to the rollout of a digital system.
-- Likha C. Cuevas-Miel
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