PhilWeb eyes acquisitions in IT gaming sector

MANILA, Philippines - PhilWeb Corp., the first and largest listed Internet company in the country, is studying acquisitions in the technology-enabled gaming sector, one of which may be announced in the coming months.

PhilWeb president Dennis Valdes also reported record results for the first half of 2009, including P228 million in net income.

He said the company forecasts growth to accelerate in the second half of the year, propelling net income to P584 million for full year 2009, double last year’s net income of P292 million.

Valdes said drivers for this growth include the quicker expansion of Pagcor e-Games (PEGS) cafés, its recession-proof revenue driver. PhilWeb now has 156 PEGS cafés, a growth of 29 percent since just the beginning of the year. “We expect to hit 200 cafés by yearend,” he added.

Valdes also pointed out that PhilWeb’s new mobile gaming products will add top line revenue, including newly launched Bid Wars, an SMS-based, lowest unique bid auction that opened Aug. 13, exclusive for Smart and Talk ‘N Text users.

Next month, PhilWeb, in cooperation with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, will launch Resibonanza, an instant-win, SMS raffle that will complement their popular Premyo Sa Resibo raffle.

Meanwhile, PhilWeb voted to increase the par value of its shares from one centavo to one peso per share, at a special stockholders meeting held recently.

Company vice-chairman Eric Recto explained that the increase in par value was done at the request of several institutional investor groups, who were previously precluded from investing in PhilWeb due to their internal rules disallowing investments in “penny stock” companies.

“With the new par value, we expect interest in PhilWeb shares to jump,” Recto pointed out.

The company’s authorized capital stock will remain at P2.6 billion but there will be a proportionate reduction in the number of shares from 260 billion to 2.6 billion shares.

The amendment will take effect upon the regulators’ approval of the company’s amended articles of incorporation.