DITO planning P4.2-B follow-on offering

DITO CME [DITO 2.10 ?1.4%; 60% avgVol] [link] confirmed that its board of directors approved a plan to conduct a follow-on offering of 1,953,500,000 common shares at P2.15/share. The DITO board said that the purpose of the raise is to “infuse additional capital into its operating subsidiary, DITO Telecommunity... to support the commercial roll-out of its network expansion and for general corporate requirements; and for regulatory compliance with the public offering requirements.” DITO is targeting to set the final pricing of the offer on August 14, with a listing of the shares scheduled for September 3.

MB BOTTOM-LINE: DITO is required by the PSE’s rules to conduct this follow-on offering, but it also happens that the company is in desperate need of cash to fund its expansion, so it will be able to kill two birds with one stone. Unlike a stock rights offering, a follow-on offering is available for anyone to purchase regardless of whether they own existing shares of DITO’s common stock, so the price of the offering is going to be critical. Keep in mind that DITO sold billions of common shares to those 3rd party Singaporean investors in the second half of 2023 for P1.00/share, back when its share price was up above P3.00/share. DITO is basically in a race against the clock to achieve some level of profitability before it drowns under a mountain of debt largely owed in US Dollars. It has a lot of operational metrics trending in the right direction (subscribers, ARPU, coverage), but some of the most critical business metrics are going the other way. DITO lost P4.1 billion in Q1 alone (after losing P8.1 billion in all of FY23) and the exchange rate that values its debt is way worse now than it was back in 2022 when forex losses were steamrolling the company’s finances. 

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