Despite delisting from the Philippine Stock Exchange on Oct. 9, 2023, due to poor market valuations, the company’s owners continue to purchase shares in the infrastructure giant.
In fact, they purchased over 16.5 million Metro Pacific shares last December and 8.85 million shares in the first semester of 2024 worth over P130 million, based on the P5.20 per share tender offer price.
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These purchases were detailed by the Ty family-led conglomerate, GT Capital Holdings, a major shareholder of Metro Pacific, which owns Manila Electric Co., Maynilad Water Services, hospitals, toll roads, trains, and more recently, agribusiness ventures.
It offers a rare glimpse at share transactions happening after delisting as long as buyers and sellers are willing.
These additional share purchases increased GT Capital’s Metro Pacific stake to 18.20 percent.
The rest of the company is owned by Indonesian tycoon Anthoni Salim, Japan’s Mitsui, and a personal company controlled by Pangilinan, the chair and CEO of Metro Pacific.
Metro Pacific issues 2.9B shares after delisting
Readers might recall that GT Capital owned as much as 20 percent of the company when it delisted from PSE.
Its ownership was diluted from 20 percent to about 18 percent after Metro Pacific issued new shares.
This happens because as the number of shares increases, each investor’s share of the total pie becomes smaller.
That issuance was also fairly sizeable since it involved 2.87 billion new shares worth nearly P15 billion, when calculated based on the tender offer price.
Weeks before the share issuance, Metro Pacific said tycoon Ramon S. Ang joined its board of directors after making a personal investment in the company.
Miguel R. Camus has been a reporter covering various domestic business topics since 2009.
