Rocket Internet accepts PLDT’s stake sale offer

MANILA, Philippines — Rocket Internet has accepted PLDT Inc.’s offer to sell 67.4 percent of the telco’s stake in the European company for P10 billion.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday, PLDT said Rocket Internet accepted 6.8 million Rocket shares tendered by the telco’s indirect subsidiary PLDT Online Investments Pte Ltd. at 24 euro per share for a total of 163.2 million euro.

Rocket will settle the offer on or before May 14.

“As a result of the sale, PLDT Online’s equity ownership in Rocket was reduced from 6.1 percent to two percent,” PLDT said.

Earlier this year, PLDT chairman and chief executive officer Manuel V. Pangilinan said the telco was open to selling its stake in Rocket Internet to fund this year’s capital expenditures.

Aside from the sale of PLDT’s stake in Rocket, Pangilinan said the telco would also use internally generated funds, as well as proceeds from the sale of receivables from the sale of the company’s stake in Beacon Electric Asset Holdings Inc. to Metro Pacific Investments Corp. to fund this year’s capex.

PLDT has set its capex at P58 billion this year, its highest allocation ever.

A large part or 53 percent of this year’s capex was earmarked for the fixed network business requirements as PLDT is embarking on an aggressive rollout of fiber broadband service to cater to growing demand for digital services of customers.

This year’s capex would also be used to overhaul information technology systems and platforms to support network management and business operations to provide more efficient services to customers.

While PLDT is selling 67.4 percent of its stake in Rocket Internet, Pangilinan has said the telco would hold on to the remaining shares on expectations the company’s share price would improve in the long term.

In 2014, PLDT invested 333 million euro for a 10 percent stake in Rocket.

The stake was diluted after Rocket went public.