Steniel Manufacturing board approves follow-on offering plan

The Steniel Manufacturing [STN 1.84 unch; 23% avgVol] [link] board of directors held a special meeting to confirm the company’s authority to conduct a follow-on offering (FOO). The company said that it plans to sell up to 157,647,919 common shares at a price range of P1.80 to P2.00/share, to raise between P284 million and P315 million. STN has a free float level of 22.27% with approximately 1.4 billion issued and outstanding common shares. The current plan would increase STN’s public float to 30% and increase the company’s outstanding shares by around 11%.    

MB bottom-line: The PSE EDGE website lists the shares as “suspended” but maybe they just haven’t cleared their browser’s cache. Joke lang. Sure, STN was suspended for 18 years before its suspension was lifted in April, so I can understand if (in the backend) STN’s status is hardcoded rather than dynamic. Aside from that, I’m not sure exactly what STN plans to use this money for, or whether this is just some sort of compliance listing to enable the company to list a bunch of shares that it sold to related parties. Nearly 38% of its issued shares are unlisted. It’s possible the raise is related to STN’s recent purchase of the Dole Philippines box plant assets, or to satisfying some components of the 10-year purchase agreement that STN’s subsidiary got out of Dole Philippines, but if it is, I guess I missed that.

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