UCPB back in the race soon

If everything turns out as planned, United Coconut Planters Bank will be registering a net operating income starting next year or the following year.

I had a very interesting conversation with UCBP president Jojo Querubin who revealed how he is going to do it: increase the equity and reduce the non-performing assets.

To increase the equity base, the bank plans to sell its stake in the CIIF oil mills which in turn owns shares in San Miguel Corp. (SMC) in the next few months. The sale would raise about P5 billion for UCPB.

And to reduce the bank’s huge NPAs, UCPB is likewise selling about P18 billion of them, most likely to a foreign company. The bulk would be unloaded via the special purpose vehicle units. According to Querubin, the SPAV will allow the bank to spread losses over 10 years.

The bank’s finances suffered in recent years as bad loans swelled, ate up its earnings and eventually eroded a capital that had not been replenished since 1986 when the government sequestered 95 percent of its equity. However, because of the bank’s ownership issue still hanging, it would be impossible for UCPB to attract new investments so government through the PDIC had to come in with a P20-billion rehabilitation plan.

The additional capital from PDIC brought the bank’s capital adequacy ratio closer to the 10-percent requirement of the BSP from a low single-digit level after UCPB got about P8 billion in additional capital outright from the sale of non-performing assets to PDIC. The bail-out package also resulted in a P5-billion net income for the bank last year, the first after a string of losses. But of course, unless UCPB succeeds in disposing its still huge NPAs, last year’s euphoria will be short-lived.

Querubin, former Bank of America country manager for the Philippines, is however confident that everything will turn out well for UCPB. After well, it was once one of the country’s most profitable financial institutions.

Let’s Do Our Part

Blame illegal cable connections for some of the problems that we are currently experiencing with our cable service.

The maintenance group of SkyCable and Home Cable investigating a system outage has discovered that this was caused by illegal connections directly tapped to both drop cable and distribution cables. Drop cables connect the cable TV service from distribution to subscriber’s homes while distribution cables connect the drop line to the main trunk cable or fiber coming from the main source or headend.

Several SkyCable and Home Cable networks experienced short circuit due to the direct tapping of illegal connections to the distribution lines or even to the trunk line itself. According to Home Cable, a cable TV plant short circuit damages not only its cables, but also its electronic equipment.

SkyCable and Home Cable reported that as they lock their taps and fix lines damaged by illegal connections, cable signal thieves continue to loosen cable connections and security seals of legitimate subscribers to find other methods of theft. These lead to frequent service interruptions to legitimate subscribers.

Already, the cable companies have sought the help of the Philippine National Police and the local governments of Metro Manila, particularly the barangay officals to help them.

We, legitimate cable TV service subscribers, should also do our share and report illegal connections. These ‘thieves’ are not only robbing the CATV companies; they are also causing us a lot of inconvenience.

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