Harvest time. The Lopez-owned Red Vulcan Holdings Corp. paid P58.50 billion in acquiring through public bidding in November last year 15 billion common shares, or 26.67 percent, and 7.50 billion preferred shares, or 33.33 percent, in PNOC Energy Development Corp. (EDC) Harvest time came three months after with the declaration on February 19, 2008 of P0.125 regular and P0.145 special dividend, for holders of 15 billion common shares, or a total of P4.05 billion and P0.004 for holders of preferred shares, or a total of  P30 million. Of the cash bonanza, P1.65 billion will go to Red Vulcan Holdings as a stockholder owning 6 billion EDC common shares and 7.5 billion preferred shares. The regular dividend will be paid on March 5, 2008 and the special dividend and the dividend due preferred shareholders on March 17, 2008. The dividends will be taken from PNOC-EDC’s retained earnings, which amounted to P13,131,655,705 as of end-2007.

Over the limit. Filinvest Land Inc. has 24,391,960,506 outstanding common shares as of February 20, 2008 based on the web site of the Philippine Stock Exchange. As a property company, Filinvest should have properly watched the trading on its shares but had not that it failed to maintain foreign ownership of its capital stock at a maximum of 40 percent, which translates to 9,956,784,136 shares. A filing lists PCD Nominee Corp. as holder of 9,813,705,137 shares as of December 31, 2007, or 40.233 percent. In addition, two stockholders, a Chinese and a British national, own 2,187,500 and 578,125 Filinvest shares, respectively. Including these shares, foreigners would own 9,816,470,762 shares, or 40.244 percent, exceeding by 59,686,560 shares the legally allowable 40-percent holdings equivalent to 9,956,784,136 shares. Nine months ago, on March 31, 2007, foreign ownership in Filinvest Land  was still within the ceiling when PCD Nominee held for foreigners 9,798,050,342, or 39.96 percent of 24,520,296,556 outstanding shares at that time.

The reduction in outstanding shares resulted from Filinvest’s continued reacquisition of its own shares in the open market which become treasury shares.

Still in demand. Like other more reliable property companies, Filinvest Land, which is controlled by the Gotianun family, continues to attract foreign investors. Apparently, foreign funds are taking advantage of the market’s decline. The stock hit a high of P1.26 on January 11, 2008 and dropped to a low of P1.04 on February 6, 2008. Invesco HK Limited, an asset management company with offices at 32/F Three Pacific Place, 1 Queen Road East, HK has been engaged in buying FLI shares. Its acquisitions from November 19, 2007 to January 18, 2008, increased Invesco’s holdings to 1,250,494, shares, or 5.11 percent, from 1.047,513,509 shares, or 4.28 percent. The HK company paid P256,173,257.70, or P1.262 per share, for 202.981 shares and contributed of $5,692,739.06 at exchange rate of P45 to a peso. Included in foreign-owned shares in the name of PCD Nominee are 5,766,222,998 shares held in trust by Standard Chartered Bank; 1,648,993,085 held in trust by Citibank N.A.; and 2,288,732,437 shares held in trust by Deutsche Bank.

Still suspended. Cosmos Bottling Corp., which was last traded on May 23, 2006, when it closed at P3, remains suspended despite the submission by the company of its audited financial reports for 2004-2006. This places the small stockholders with no recourse but to hold on to their Cosmos shares and hope for dividend either in cash or in stock. Philippine Bottlers Inc., which is now a wholly-owned unit of the Atlanta-based The Coca-Cola Company, owns 887,408,517 CBC shares, or 98.2123 percent. PCD Nominee holds 2,915,496 shares, or 0.3227 percent, for Filipino investors and 178,000, or 0.0917 percent, for foreigners other than Philippine Bottlers. CBC, a former indirect subsidiary of San Miguel Corp., reported net loss of P1.065 billion in the first nine months of 2007 against P12.061-million net income in the same period in 2006. The loss reduced the  company’s retained earnings to P1.718 billion from P2.504 billion as of December 31, 2006. As a unit of San Miguel, Cosmos’s gross profit dropped 21.382 percent to P2.548 billion in 2005 from P3.241 billion in 2004. Its net income during the comparable periods plunged 49.737 percent to P106.392 million from P211.673 million.

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PAL Holdings Inc., the entity which controls Philippine Airlines (PAL), said earnings fell by more than three-fourths after it paid US-based Boeing Co. some $63 million as part of a program to acquire new aircraft.

Eternal Plans inaugurates new product

LEADING preneed company Eternal Plans celebrates 27 years in the industry by launching a new life plan, intended to help boost sales by 20 percent this year.

NETWORK Appliance Inc. (NetApp), a network storage and data management company, will soon widen its product presence in the Philippines by appointing Wordtext Systems Inc. (WSI), the country’s leading software and hardware vendor, as its sole distributor.

ETON Properties Philippines Inc. (EPPI), the listed real-estate arm of the Lucio Tan group, has created a new vehicle called Belton Communities Inc. to serve low- to middle-income homebuyers.

THE Philippine Stock Exchange Index lost 9.62, or 0.3 percent to 3,181.05 at the close in Manila, declining for the fourth time in five days. The following are among the most active stocks in the Philippine market Wednesday.

The Lopez-owned Red Vulcan Holdings Corp. paid P58.50 billion in acquiring through public bidding in November last year 15 billion common shares,