New shareholder to boost Philweb e-bingo business

MANILA, Philippines — Philweb Corp., the listed gaming company owned by businessman Gregorio “Greggy” Araneta III, is set to welcome a new shareholder that would boost the company’s electronic bingo business.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Philweb said Palmary Corp. has  signed a share purchase agreement with the company to purchase 97.33 million shares, representing 6.78 percent of the listed firm.

“I welcome the Palmary Group’s investment in our company, a great sign of faith in the positive developments we have attained in the past year. I believe this investment will result in positive gains for both over the next few years,” Araneta said.

Palmary is an operator of electronic bingo outlets and an accredited e-bingo machine supplier to the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR) for its network of electronic bingo outlets.

Aside from the share purchase agreement, Philweb and Palmary also entered into a cooperation agreement to jointly develop their electronic bingo or e-bingo businesses.

At present, PhilWeb operates six e-bingo outlets, while the Palmary Group of Companies operates 16 outlets.

The Palmary Group is also an accredited supplier of e-bingo machines in PAGCOR’s network of over 300 e-bingo outlets with over 30,000 e-bingo terminals.

“We are very excited about our future in the e-bingo business in cooperation with the Palmary Group. When combined with our growing e-Games business, we now have an expanding, two-fold footprint in the whole electronic gaming sector,” Araneta said.

PhilWeb is currently the service provider to 67 e-Games outlets, and together with the Palmary Group, would co-manage 22 e-bingo outlets.

“I remain deeply committed to getting PhilWeb back to its former profitability levels, during which times we were able to pay out high dividends to stockholders and generate significant share price increases as well. We are also committed to our role in consistently increasing the revenues of PAGCOR, which we have done for over 13 years,” Araneta said.

PhilWeb is an accredited service provider to PAGCOR for its network of electronic gaming outlets.

It also has a wholly owned subsidiary, BigGame Inc., which has PAGCOR gaming licenses for its e-Games outlets.