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MANILA - Philippine National Oil Co.-Exploration Corp. will undertake a share sale before the year ends.
Gemiliano C. Lopez Jr., PNOC-EC chairman, said the company will pursue the follow-on offering in compliance with the bourse's 10-percent minimum public float for listed firms.
"Malaking bagay to sa kumpanya e dahil ito pag nangyari hindi na pwedeng ibenta ito ng mura. Pwedeng ibenta ito kung ano yung prevailing market," he said referring to efforts to privatize the company during the last administration.
PNOC-EC is the petroleum and coal arm of state-owned PNOC, which controls 99.71 percent of the company. PNOC-EC's cash cow is a 10-percent stake in the country's largest natural gas field, the Malampaya, which fuels three power plants in Luzon.
Besides this asset, PNOC-EC also owns a commercial port in Mabini, Batangas and controls eight petroleum service contracts and five coal operating contracts located in various parts of the country.
The company earlier tapped UBS AG as financial adviser for the secondary offering. Philippine economic managers, however, sued for more time to determine a proper valuation and timing for the follow-on offering.
Silvestre R. Punsalan III, PNOC-EC vice president, said UBS AG is already undertaking the valuation, which would take about three months to complete.
Once UBS AG completes the valuation of PNOC-EC, the company will seek approval from the Philippine Stock Exchange and the Department of Finance.
DOF will decide if the "indicative acceptable price of the shares of PNOC-EC and of course, the favorable market conditions," will merit the follow-on offering.
Afterwards, PNOC-EC will conduct a road show in Singapore, Hong Kong and London to drum up interest in the secondary listing.
The company plans to offer 218 million primary shares to the market, 10 percent of which will be offered to retail investors while the remaining 90 percent will be allocated for institutional investors.
The company plans to use the proceeds of the secondary listing to fund a portion of its P20 billion capital spending program for 2012 to 2016.
"Assuming that we don’t meet the December 31 deadline, we will request for an extension without any suspension because technically our shares should be suspended by December 31 for non-compliance... we will request for the extension to most likely the first quarter of 2013 because the de-listing is June 2013," Punsalan said.
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