Belle buying back more shares next year

MANILA, Philippines – Belle Corp., the SM Group’s high end property developer and leisure gaming company, plans to buy back more shares next year as it takes advantage of the prevailing low price environment, a ranking company official told The STAR.

“Belle has repurchased about 42 million of its own shares at a cost of approximately P134 million out of its board authorization of up to P1 billion. We thus still have a lot of room to continue buying back stock in 2016,” Belle CFO Manuel Gana said.

On Tuesday, the company disclosed it has repurchased from the market 142,000 Belle common shares at P2.80 per share or at a cost of about P400,000.

Prior to this, Belle also repurchased last week a total of 1.35 million common shares at an average price of approximately P2.74 per share or at a total cost of P3.7 million.

Gana said the latest buyback is part of the company’s share buyback program.

Under the program, Belle’s management has been given the go signal by the company’s board of directors to buy back an aggregative value of P1 billion.

It was in January when the company announced the redemption of up to P1 billion worth of shares held by the public.

Belle’s shares closed at P2.91 per share on Dec. 29 from the previous close of P2.80.

In 2015, Belle experienced heavy selling of its shares after the company spun off its key gaming assets.

It effectively transferred its stake in integrated resort City of Dreams Manila and online lotto equipment operator Pacific Online Systems Corp. to Premium Leisure Corp., then known as Sinophil Corp.

City of Dreams Manila, one of four integrated casino resorts inside the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.’s 100-hectare Entertainment City, is a joint venture of Belle and Melco Crown Philippines.

In the first nine months of the year, Belle Corp. reported a net income of P1.144 billion, 38.6 percent lower than the P1.862 billion in the same period last year.

However, the company said the nine-month income was 87 percent or P531.4 million more compared to a non-recurring income of P613.1 million in the same period last year.