AYALA Land Inc., the country’s second-largest property developer, said it is inclined to issue more short-dated notes as part of its funding requirement.
The company on Monday listed its P4.3 billion in short-dated notes due in 2019, the first of such tenor to be listed at the Philippine Dealing and Exchange (PDEx) Corp., the trading floor for the fixed-income securities.
Augusto Bengzon, the company’s chief finance officer and treasurer, said the company saw an opportunity to issue short-dated notes when the central bank decided to pull the plug on its special deposit account (SDA) in June last year.
“And we said where will the UITFs [unit investment trust fund] go and this is the last investor based that we haven’t really successfully been able to tap. So we structured this short-dated note, together with our partner China Bank, and today, we hope to list the first of many…to tap a new investor base,” Bengzon said after the company’s listing ceremony.
“All this, together with the transformational shelf registration that was passed by the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] last year, I think we’ll make it much, much easier for corporates to access the debt capital markets on a timely and cost effective basis,” he added.
The SEC now allows firms to submit registration papers once for their funding requirements during the next three years, with the issues can be broken down in tranches. Companies, however, will need to secure the SEC’s approval every time they sell the securities.
Bengzon said when the company first accessed the corporate bond market in 2008, its only objective was to expand its funding sources other than just bank loans.
“We feel that we are in much better footing today than when we started this journey, and we look forward to the next nine years and, perhaps, in that point, we’ll foresee a capital market that is already on autonomous driving,” he said.
Ayala Land is the only company to list a 20-year debt, the longest to be listed in the PDEx. It also has the record of most number of listing in a single year at four times.
Including Monday’s listing, Ayala Land now has P87.3 billion outstanding issues listed at PDEx, representing 12 percent of the total outstanding issues. In total, the Ayala Group has P144.3 billion in listed issues, representing 20 percent of the overall outstanding issues in the PDEx.
Cesar Crisol, president of PDS Holdings Inc., the company that owns PDEx, said Ayala Land’s listing of short-dated notes open the gates for the trading of these securities.
“Being the first issue is not easy, and today’s enrollment is the pilot issuance which has come with much hard work and coordination among the stakeholders, regulators, the legal minds and yours truly, the infrastructure provider,” he said.
With Patricia Artajo
Image credits: Nonie Reyes