San Miguel Pure Foods sells shares at deep discount of P240

MANILA, Philippines – Diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corp. priced a secondary share offer of its food unit at a deep discount of P240 each to comply with the yearend deadline of having a 10% minimum public ownership.

On Tuesday, November 20, San Miguel Pure Foods Co Inc. put on offer up to 25 million shares at the low end of its indicative range of P240 to P300 announced last week, and way below the current market price of P680.

This means the offer, which was made to institutional investors, would raise about P6 billion ($146 million) when the shares, including 2.5 million over allotments, will be crossed at the stock exchange on November 21.

San Miguel earlier hired UBS, Maybank-ATR Kim Eng and Standard Chartered Bank to act as the underwriters for the offering.

San Miguel Pure Foods will not be getting any proceeds from the share sale. Parent San Miguel, which is the selling shareholder, will use the proceeds from the offer for general corporate purposes.

This will also increase Pure Food’s public from to up to 15% from the current 0.08%.

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) required lister firms to increase the share owned by the publics as part of capital market reforms. 

San Miguel Brewery Inc. and San Miguel Properties Inc still have 0.61% and 0.06% public float, respectively. The brewery unit, partly owned by Japan’s Kirin Holdings Co Ltd., has asked the PSE for a 6-month extension to comply with the requirement.

San Miguel-controlled PAL Holdings Inc, the parent firm of legacy carrier Philippine Airlines, has already announced it would voluntarily delist its shares.

Over dozen listed companies have been yet to comply with the float rule. – Rappler.com