Aboitiz mulls unsecured notes issue

MANILA, Philippines — Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV), the listed Cebu-based conglomerate, may issue unsecured notes depending on market conditions.

In a disclosure yesterday, AEV said its wholly owned subsidiary AEV International Pte. Ltd. has appointed banks as arrangers for a series of investor meetings in different parts around the globe.

AEV International specifically  tapped The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp. and Standard Chartered Bank as joint global coordinators.

It also tapped DBS Bank Ltd., HSBC, Mizuho Securities (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., MUFG Securities Asia (Singapore) Ltd., and Standard Chartered Bank as joint lead managers and joint bookrunners to arrange a series of fixed income investor meetings and conference calls.

These meetings will run in Hong Kong, Singapore and London starting Monday (Jan. 6).

“An offering of US dollar-denominated Regulation S only senior unsecured notes may follow, subject to market conditions. The notes, if issued, are expected to be unconditionally and irrevocably guaranteed by AEV and unrated,” AEV said.

The final amount of notes has yet to be disclosed.

AEV is one of the biggest and oldest conglomerates in the country. It has investments in power, banking, land, infrastructure and food among others.

In the nine months of 2019, AEV reported a nine percent drop in net income to P15.7 billion.  It also incurred non-recurring losses of P155 million, lower than the previous year’s P407 million, representing net foreign exchange and derivative losses.

Without these one-off losses, AEV’s core net income would have been P15.9 billion or 10 percent lower than the P17.7 billion recorded a year ago.