Philex Mining [PX 3.95 1.25%] [link] disclosed an updated timetable for its stock rights offering (SRO), with the ex-date on June 24, the record date on June 29, and the offer running from July 14 through July 25. The update did not mention when the shares would list. It also didn’t mention a price, or an entitlement ratio, but did say that the number of shares to be sold would be a “max” of 842 million.
Barkadans will remember that PX received SEC approval for this SRO back in January, and that it later delayed the SRO in April due to “market conditions”. At the time of the delay, I speculated that it might have been a bit of gamesmanship from Manny V. Pangilinan, the owner of PX, who has used the threat of “going to the market” to force the hand of potential investors before.
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It’s hard to say what’s going on here, considering that “market conditions” are hardly better now than they were when PX delayed the SRO just a couple of months ago. The PSE was at 7,200 when the PX board approved the original SRO plan back in November of 2021. It was at 7,450 when the SEC conditionally approved the SRO in the first week of February. The PSE was at 7,150 in the first week of April when PX decided to delay the SRO because “market conditions”, and now, with the PSE at 6,160, PX is reviving the plan.
The original SRO was listed at a maximum price of P4.81/share, which would have made the full sale of all the available shares worth approximately P4 billion. Now, though, PX’s price is around P3.95/share, so the board will need to aggressively re-price the offering to make it attractive to existing shareholders. The SRO would raise about P3.3 billion if the board set the price of the SRO equal to yesterday’s close, but that’s not likely to happen since SROs are usually offered at a discounted price to encourage investors to pay-up.
Is this another MVP head-fake to push an investor back to the table? PX has been fishing for a strategic investor for over two years now, so maybe something is finally getting close.
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