Philippines First Gen Prices IPO At PHP47/Shr -Sources
Saturday, January 28, 2006
MANILA (Dow Jones)--First Gen Corp., one of the largest Philippine independent power producers, set the price of its initial public offering at PHP47 a share, persons familiar with the deal said Thursday.
"The price was reduced on the request of investors," said one of the sources.
First Gen last week said it will offer as much as 219.9 million new shares at PHP51 each and 180.9 million shares at PHP62 each to raise target proceeds of PHP11.2 billion.
Another source said the company decided to offer only 180.9 million new shares, which will raise PHP8.5 billion.
First Gen ended its international roadshow Thursday.
CLSA Ltd. and UBS AG, the international underwriters of First Gen's IPO, didn't comment.
"The international offering was covered," said a Hong Kong-based source familiar with the transaction, but he declined to elaborate. "The pricing wasn't due to any fundamental concerns about the offering's quality - the range was just too high," he added.
First Gen owns four power plants with a total generation capacity of 1,726.6 megawatts, equivalent to around 11% of the Philippines' total installed capacity. It isn't building any new power plants at the moment, but plans to use part of the IPO proceeds to acquire power plants to be privatized by state utility National Power Corp. (NAP.YY).
First Gen had set aside 54.1 million additional shares, while major shareholders such as First Philippine Holdings Corp. (FPH.PH) were ready to sell 125 million shares in case of oversubscription.
The market has been rife with talk of the weak demand for First Gen because of a competing share offering from food company Universal Robina Corp. (URC.PH) and concern over that First Gen only has one buyer for its electricity: its sister company and the country's largest power distributor Manila Electric Co. (MERB.PH), or Meralco.
First Gen's IPO, the country's first in 2006, will start on Jan. 31. The shares are scheduled to debut on the Philippine Stock Exchange on Feb. 10.
ATR-Kim Eng Capital Partners Inc. and BDO Capital & Investments Corp. will handle the local offering.
posted by philpower @ 6:27 PM,
