FPHC to buy back $5-M notes

First Philippine Holdings Corp. (FPHC), the umbrella company for the power and manufacturing businesses of the Lopez family, is buying back $5 million of its remaining $26.1 million floating rate notes due in 2009.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday, FPHC said the payment for the buyback will come from proceeds of its preferred share issue in April.

FPHC sold P4.3 billion worth of Series B perpetual preferred shares, including 30 million primary shares with an over-allotment option of 20 million priced at P100 each.

Aside from paying down debt, FPHC also intends to use the proceeds to fund strategic acquisitions programmed this year up to 2011 as well as other capital and operating requirements.

FPHC president Elpidio Ibanez earlier said the company was considering tapping the debt market next year to fund maturing loans due 2010. The planned borrowing, however, is subject to favorable market conditions.

The company made amortization and interest payments for its $35 million term notes due in 2011. Its plan is to partially repay and refinance its outstanding debts worth around P1.5 billion.

FPHC, which is 43.15 percent owned by Benpres Holdings Corp., is aiming to trim its debt by $100 million in the next two years, using proceeds from asset sales. The company recently sold its stake in Manila North Tollways Corp. (MNTC), the operator of the North Luzon Expressway, to Metro Pacific Investments Corp. It will receive P6.2 billion from the sale.

FPHC might also use proceeds from the asset disposition to fund its joint venture through First Philec Electric Corp. with SunPower Manufacturing Ltd.

The venture operates a wafer-slicing plant at the First Philippine Industrial Park in Batangas that services the growing solar energy industry.

First Philec is the holding company of the manufacturing businesses of First Holdings, while SPML is a subsidiary of solar technology provider SunPower Corp. of the United States.

The Batangas plant is the first large-scale silicon wafer-slicing facility in the Philippines and is envisioned to have 100 multiwire saws producing 240 million wafers annually to support approximately 720 megawatts of solar energy.