CONGLOMERATE Ayala Corp. on Thursday said it raised some $275 million (about P12.37 billion) through a top-up placement that will be channeled to its power and infrastructure ventures. The company, however, saw its share price fall, after it sold the shares at a discount.
The company said in its disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) that it sold some 18.78 million common shares at P660 apiece, or a discount from its last traded price of P682 per share. As a result, its share price at the PSE declined 5 percent.
“The top-up placement entails our issuance of equal number of new shares at the same price, with Mermac Inc. as the seller in the placement tranche and subscriber in the subscription tranche,” the company said.
Mermac is the holding firm of the Ayala family.
The placing price reflects a discount of 5.2 percent, based on the 30-day volume weighted average closing price of Ayala shares. It then increased its public float from 38.23 percent to over 40 percent.
“The placement was 2.35 times oversubscribed, with strong demand coming from long-only funds and a good mix of investors coming from Asia, Europe and the US. Orders from the Philippines were solid as reflected by demand from local institutional investors,” the company said.
As a top-up placement, the principal shareholders who lent their shares for the fund-raising exercise will be buying back the shares at the same price.
Ayala recently raised some P13.5 billion in the re-issuance of its non-voting preferred class b shares, proceeds of which will be used to pay off its debt instead of plowing it to its capital-intensive infrastructure projects.
For this transaction, however, the company said it will use the proceeds in power and infrastructure projects, the two emerging businesses of Ayala that it wants to have more contribution in its income within five years.
“Proceeds raised from this placement will allow Ayala to expand into business lines that will result in robust and sustainable earnings for the company. At the same time, this equity issuance further strengthens the balance sheet of the company,” said Delfin Gonzalez Jr., the company’s chief finance officer.
CLSA Ltd. acted as sole global coordinator, while CLSA and Credit Suisse (Singapore) Ltd. acted as joint bookrunners and placement agents and BPI Capital Corp. acted as domestic bookrunner and placement agent.
Gonzalez earlier said the company is still looking to raise some $1 billion to increase its GN Power Mariveles Coal Plant by 1,000 megawatts (MW) and some $600 million to construct a new 600-MW coal-power plant in GN Power Kauswagan.
“We expect to complete the construction by 2018 for everything we have. We should be able to achieve financial close of the Kauswagan plant before the end of the year, while in Bataan, we expect financial close in the middle of next year. Our partner is Sithe Power, a unit of Blackstone Group,” Gonzalez said. He said the company is looking at export-credit agencies to bank roll the said projects.
Officials said the company is on track to hit its goal of 1,000 MW of attributable generating capacity that would make it the fourth-largest power generator, after San Miguel Corp., the Lopez group under First Gen Corp. and Aboitiz Power.