Shareholders of Philippine distiller Tanduay Holdings have approved a plan for the company to sell up to 3 billion shares, which could help it to raise more than $800 million.
All the shares will come from Tangent Holdings, the majority shareholder, and will be sold to investors by way of a follow-on offering. Pricing will be determined through a bookbuilding exercise, Tanduay said in a statement filed to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday.
Tangent will then use the proceeds of the placement to subscribe to the same number of new shares in the company at an issue price equivalent to the placing price, according to the statement. Tanduay has a free-float of about 12.6%, according to stock exchange data, though Bloomberg data shows that Tangent owns about 89%.
Based on yesterday’s closing price of Ps12.42, the sale could raise about Ps37 billion ($890 million). UBS has been appointed as the sole bookrunner for the deal.
Further details such as the timing of the transaction were not available yesterday.
The shareholder approval comes as Tanduay’s stock has had a bullish-run this year, ending yesterday’s trading up 3.9%. It has almost tripled since the start of 2012, from Ps4.2 to Ps12.42. That compares with a rise of about 22% on the PSEi Index during the same period. The index was up 0.6% yesterday.
In the six months to end-June this year, Tanduay reported revenue of Ps59.2 billion and net income of Ps3.6 billion. The company is part of local tycoon Lucio Tan’s business empire and is best known for its Tanduay brand of rum, which has been made in the Philippines since 1854.
In July Ayala Land, a Philippine property developer, raised Ps13.6 billion ($323 million) from a top-up placement, which it planned to use for acquisitions of properties and assets.
