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LOCAL
nonbank remittance firm i-Remit Inc. has set its initial
offer price at P4.68 per share for the primary and
secondary shares it will sell to investors starting this
Friday.
At this
price, the company may raise gross proceeds of P658.02
million from the 140,604,000 shares for sale. Of this,
P520.69 million represent primary gross proceeds, which
will go straight to the company, while P137.38 million
will go to the selling shareholders.
Minus
the expenses, the company will realize net proceeds of
P476 million, which will fund expansion in existing and
new markets, augment working capital requirements and
retire some of its short-term debts.
The
company is selling 107,417,000 primary shares, while the
existing shareholders, namely, Surewell Equities Inc.,
JTKC Equities Inc. and JPSA Global Services Co., are
disposing a combined 33,187,000 secondary shares.
The
offer period will begin on October 5 until October 11.
Listing and trading of the shares will commence on
October 17.
“The
institutional book building was 3.7 times covered,
following the warm response from the October 1 road show
and with bullish sentiment returning to the stock
markets here and abroad. We are thus pleasantly
surprised that i-Remit and the major shareholders chose
to maximize investor goodwill over price,” said Jojo
Marcelo, executive vice president of First Metro
Investment, the issue manager and lead underwriter of
the IPO.
He
added, “i-Remit fully realizes that this IPO, the first
since early August, will potentially reopen the market
for new equity issues after the huge correction due to
US
subprime woes. By leaving something on the table for the
investing public, it has been an investment bank’s dream
client.”
Established in 2001, i-Remit has rapidly grown to become
the nation’s largest Filipino-owned, nonbank remittance
company.
The
company operates in 24 countries across
North America,
Europe,
Australia, Asia, the Pacific Isles and the Middle East,
with 365 outlets, associates and agents worldwide, and
more than 2,100 payout stations throughout the
Philippines.
As of
end-June, its consolidated net income amounted to P43.5
million, exceeding its full- year consolidated net
income of P42.5 million in 2006. |
