Filinvest embarks on 6-city roadshow abroad for follow-on offering of shares

MANILA, Philippines -Filinvest Development Corp. (FDC), the investment holding firm of the Gotianun family, is embarking on a six-city international roadshow for its follow-on offering of shares.

From Manila, top officials of FDC will fly to Singapore, Hong Kong, London, New York, Boston and San Francisco, the company said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

The offering is valued at P14.15 billion based on FDC’s market price of P5.66 each share Friday. It could fetch as much as P16.275 billion with the exercise of the over-allotment option of 375 million secondary shares or up to 15 percent to be sold to the public.

The offering involves the sale of FDC shares by the Gotianun family’s ALG Holdings Corp. and a simultaneous subscription by ALG of an equivalent number of shares to be issued by FDC.

Proceeds from the issue will be used to expand FDC’s landbanking activities and hospitality business, increase capitalization and pay down debt. Other funds will be channeled to its foray into infrastructure and utilities sectors.

The group is venturing back into the power generation business. It is considering two potential clean coal-fired power generation projects – a 150-megawatt project in Visayas.

FDC president and chief executive officer Josephine Gotianun-Yap said: “The base offering of 2.5 billion shares is intended to put FDC and its subsidiaries in a good position to take advantage of opportunities from the robust growth we expect the country to have in the next few years.”

The transaction, when completed by the end of this month, will raise FDC’s public float from 6 percent to 29.5 percent.

UBS AG is sole global coordinator and joint bookrunner while JP Morgan Securities Ltd. is joint bookrunner.

The Filinvest Group is one of the country’s leading conglomerates, with interests in real estate through Filinvest Land, financial and banking services through East West Banking Corp. and sugar manufacturing through Pacific Sugar Holdings.

Filinvest Land Inc., FDC’s 51 percent-owned property unit, develops affordable and mid-income housing projects as well as tourism-related projects.

FDC also has a 91 percent effective ownership in Filinvest Alabang Inc., the developer of Filinvest Corporate City in Alabang – the premiere urban district in Southern Metro Manila.

East West is one of the fastest-growing commercial banks with one of the highest return on equity in the Philippine banking sector while Pacific Sugar operates two sugar mills and two sugar refineries, and has corporate sugarcane farming operations.

The Filinvest Group has been in the residential business for over 45 years and has developed over 2,000 hectares of raw land into homes for more than 110,000 families, as well as over 600,000 square meters of office/retail and high-rise residential space.