Quick takes from around the market
Globe [GLO 2146.00 1.01%] [link] will price its SRO today. GLO said that the SRO price would be a 15-25% discount off of the volume weighted market price. Pricing dates are not like deadlines, so we could hear the final price later today, or maybe even some time tomorrow.
MB Quick Takes: If GLO uses the volume-weighted average of the previous month, then I’d say that we’ll probably see an SRO price in the range of P1650 to P1950 based on the discount range they provided. However, the longer the period (3 months, 6 months, etc), the higher the price will get. GLO was trading at around P3,500/share at the start of the year!
First Gen [FGEN 17.50 1.16%] [link] put out a press release to announce that it will change the name of its floating storage regasification barge from BW Paris to BW Batangas.The Governor of Batangas said that the renaming of the barge shows FGEN’s “support and commitment to Batangas”.
MB Quick Take: Feels like we’re having some Ghost Month hangover here. You know it’s a slow news day when a disclosure announcing the naming of a barge is the third-most popular document opened on the EDGE disclosure servers for the day. Good for Batangas, I guess?
Cebu Landmasters [CLI 2.46] [link] confirms reports that the SEC has approved CLI’s shelf registration of P15 billion of bonds, and that it plans to sell a first tranche of P8 billion in bonds to raise money for capex and general corporate purposes. The first tranche will be P5 billion in principal bonds, and P3 billion in oversubscription.
MB Quick Take: If I were in a position to sell debt, I’d want to get it out the door sooner, rather than later, to avoid having to lock-in at higher rates. As the continued fight against inflation causes the BSP to raise interest rates, the rates of all the downstream debt products (like bonds) will also need to rise to remain competitive. This “beauty pageant of debt” is what has caused the sharp decline in REIT sector stock prices, as prices range lower to find the new competitive yields relative to the yields of bonds and other debt products.
Leisure & Resorts World Corporation [LR 1.56] [link] board voted to change the company’s name to DigiPlus Corporation to better align with the company’s focus on “innovative technological platforms”. It also changed its address from Ortigas Center to the EcoPrime building in Taguig as part of its desire for a “new corporate image” to suit “the Company's new brand”.
MB Quick Take: It’s the continued evolution of this company that started life back in 1957 selling fertilizer as Atlas Fertilizer Corporation. In the mid-90s, the company evolved into its second form, which was that of a real-estate developer focused on leisure and recreation. More recently, the company evolved again to get into physical gaming (bingo parlors) and, even more recently, digital gaming through its subsidiary, Total Gamezone Xtreme. From a Google discovery and uniqueness perspective, “DigiPlus” is kind of a terrible name that won’t allow the company’s image and brand to shine that brightly without additional (significant) work. That said, it’s not like “Leisure & Resorts World” was a masterpiece in branding either, and they’ve done alright with that.
Raslag [ASLAG 2.20 2.22%] [link] boys continue buying up ASLAG shares through T.G.N. Realty Corporation (TGN), an affiliate owned by ASLAG Chairman, Peter Nepomuceno, and director, Arsenio Valdes. TGN bought 500,000 shares on Tuesday.
MB Quick Take: These two keep buying up shares, as they have since the day of the IPO. I don’t mention it because I think there’s something wrong with this: what they do with their own money is their own business. At some point, though, these shares will chip away at the public float to a point where their purchases may be constrained by the PSE’s rule that companies must maintain at a public float level of at least 20%.
JG Summit [JGS 50.50 4.72%] [link] hopes that its joint venture digital bank, GoTyme Bank, will have 5.5 million users in three years (2025). GoTyme recently announced a partnership with BancNet and Visa to provide a “hybrid” debit card for the Philippine market. The link with BancNet gives the card functionality with local ATMs and point-of-sales machines, and the link with Visa gives the card utility as an international/online payment option.
MB Quick Take: We have been hearing about “banking the unbanked” for over a decade now. The financial industry is desperate to bring as much of the country’s population into its system as possible, the government (through the BSP’s digitization mandate) is doing what it can to encourage this shift. As we’ve seen with the digital payment platforms, what starts out as a way for the unbanked to make payments and participate in commerce quickly devolves into a race to use that network to sell loans and other debt products. I’m not saying that GoTyme Bank is setting out down this path only to get to the sweet sweet fruit that grows from the Tree of Lending to the Lower Classes, but I am saying that over the years I have been consistently disappointed by companies that push altruistic marketing only to hide predatory terms in their products that serve to exploit the very people it sets out to help. Fingers crossed, but I’ve been taught by past performance to keep my default configuration set to “skeptical”.
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Merkado Barkada's opinions are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any particular stock. These daily articles are not updated with new information, so each investor must do his or her own due diligence before trading, as the facts and figures in each particular article may have changed.
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