Quick takes from around the market

Premiere Horizon Alliance [PHA 0.22, down 1.8%; 126% avgVol] [link] held a special board meeting where Mr. Roberto Ortiz resigned as President, CEO, and director, and Mr. Augusto Cosio Jr. resigned as Chairman and director. The PHA board approved the nomination of Mr. Emmanuel Herbosa as Chairman, and Mr. Eugenio Tan as President and CEO. Mr. Herbosa is the former President and CEO of the Development Bank of the Philippines, and recently joined the board of directors of Ovialand.

 

MB quick take: Will these changes bring any stability to PHA? This company has been a complete disaster for years due to its failed entanglement with SquidPay and its hilariously-dramatic frontman, Marvin Dela Cruz. About the only thing that shareholders could count on over this period has been the consistent degradation of the stock’s price, which has fallen from a high of P3.14/share in March 2021 to just P0.222/share as of yesterday’s close. That’s a 93% drop. An optimist would say that the only way to go from here is up, but anyone saying that over the past two years would have been wrong. Maybe this is the inflection point for change. Or maybe it’s just another chapter of the same book. Mr. Herbosa and Mr. Tan were both already involved in the company as directors, so this isn’t a complete breath of fresh air.
 

Chinabank [CHIB 31.00 unch; 186% avgVol] [link] teased a H1/23 net income of P10.8 billion, up 7% y/y, driven by a 16% jump in net interest income to P25.5 billion. Total assets grew 15% to P1,385 billion, good for fourth on the chart of largest private domestic banks in the country.

MB quick take: In another disclosure yesterday, CHIB said that it was pushing ?2 billion down into its subsidiary, China Bank Savings (CBS), to sustain CBS’s loan expansion and “enhance its ability to cover and serve more segments of the banking and unbanked population.” The banks smell the opportunity in the personal lending segment, and this move by CHIB is meant to reach for those ripe fruits as well.
 

Aboitiz Equity Ventures [AEV 52.80, up 1.4%; 41% avgVol] [link] disclosed on Wednesday that it was teaming up with a European bottler to purchase Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines (CCBP) from The Coca-Cola Company for $.18 billion, but as Nicky Franco pointed out, this is the sixth change of control for CCBP in 25 years, with the ownership of the company shifting once every five years on average.

 

MB Quick Take: So who’s going to buy it in 2028? Will Coke buy it back again for the third time? This transaction came out of the blue for me, and I just thought that this company’s ownership history was an interesting piece of context.

--

Merkado Barkada is a free daily newsletter on the PSE, investing and business in the Philippines. You can subscribe to the newsletter or follow on Twitter to receive the full daily updates.

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.