SSI Group Inc., the Tantoco family’s specialty retailing arm, on Thursday said it received orders from foreign institutional buyers that exceeded the number of its shares offered.
The company said in a statement that it concluded its international road show and started its selling shares for its initial public offering.
Before the road shows, SSI Group had secured cornerstone investors committed to take up 34 percent of the offered shares. These include Bank of the Philippine Islands Asset Management and Trust Group, Government Service Insurance System, Havenport Asset Management Pte. Ltd., Macquarie Asia New Stars Fund, MLIS–York Asian Event-Driven UCITS Fund and York Asian Opportunities Investment Master Fund.
SSI is offering for sale to the public some 864.22 million shares, divided into 695.7 million unissued common shares and 168.52 million shares held by selling shareholders, for the primary offer and another 129.63 million shares for its over-allotment option.
At P7.50 per share, the company will generate some P7.45 billion in proceeds, down from a previous target of P12.42 billion.
Some 80 percent of the total offering are primary shares to be issued by SSI Group and 20-percent secondary shares from existing shareholders. Should the overallotment option for 129.6 million shares be fully exercised, the IPO could raise as much as P7.45 billion on a total of 993.9 million shares.
The company plans to use the proceeds to expand its specialty retail businesses to fund additional investments in the Family Mart convenience-store chain and Wellworth department stores, and to retire some debt. SSI Group represents 103 international brands and operates 655 stores as of June 30, 2014.
All shares offered for sale approximately amount to 26.1 percent of the company post-IPO.
The company said P1.5 billion will be used to pay a number of financial obligations with banks, while some P395.7 billion will be used for corporate purposes.
BPI Capital Corp., the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd. Singapore branch and Credit Suisse (Singapore) Ltd. are acting as joint global coordinator and bookrunners. SSI currently has 111,585 square meters of retail space, 655 stores in total, for its 103 specialty store brands.
VG Cabuag