Ramos’ Anglo Holdings hikes stake in Philodrill

MANILA, Philippines - The Ramos family’s investment firm Anglo Philippine Holdings Corp. has completed its plan of increasing its stake in an oil exploration firm.

In a disclosure, Anglo Holdings said it bought 19.5 billion shares of Philodrill Corp. through a special block sale.

At P0.04 per share, which was derived from the volume weighted average price in the last 60 trading days, the transaction was valued at P780 million, the company said.

The purchase allowed Anglo Holdings to increase its shares in Philodrill to 11.87 percent from the previous 1.71 percent, in line with the Ramos family’s thrust of gaining “meaningful participation” in the natural resources sector.

Early last week, Anglo Holdings sold its 214.145 million shares or a 4.5-percent stake in upscale developer Shang Properties Inc., the local property unit of Malaysia’s Kuok Group, for P778.46 million.

Anglo Holdings said Philodrill’s higher dividend rate and better market liquidity will allow the investment firm flexibility in realizing gains or minimizing losses.

Philodrill is part of the Galoc Production Co. (GPC) consortium that owns an oil production field in the Northwest Palawan basin.

In November 2011, the consortium temporarily stopped operations at the oil field to give way for upgrades. GPC resumed its commercial operations in April last year.

GPC, which holds 58.29 percent of Service Contract (SC) 14C, is jointly-owned by the Vitol Group and Otto Energy Ltd. Other stakeholders in SC 14C include Oriental Petroleum and its unit Linapacan Oil Gas & Power Corp. (7.57 percent); Philodrill (7.03 percent); Forum Energy Corp. (2.27 percent); Alcorn Gold (1.53 percent) and PetroEnergy (1.03 percent).

Remaining recoverable volumes of the Galoc oil field is estimated at 8.9 million barrels on a proven basis and 13.4 million barrels on a proven and probable basis, both figures up 156 percent and 134 percent, respectively, from previous data.

Aside from Philodrill, other major investments of Anglo Holdings are exploration firm Vulcan Materials Corp. (100 percent), United Paragon Mining Corp. (21.81 percent), and gold and copper miner Atlas Consolidated Mining & Development Corp. (8.27 percent).

The Ramos family is behind National Book Store Inc., the country’s largest bookstore chain.