AbaCore gets SEC approval for 2020 stock dividend

AbaCore [ABA 0.55 ?3.5%; 185% avgVol] [link] said on Friday that it received an email approval from the SEC for ABA’s 2020 stock dividend. The dividend, which was meant to cover 318,593,391 common shares of ABA, was distributed on 12 December 2024 to shareholders of record as of 30 October 2020. ABA cautioned that while the dividend has been approved, it has only just submitted all the documentary requirements needed to list the new shares, and that the new shares will be available for trading “upon the approval of the listing application with the PSE.”

MB BOTTOM-LINE:  Stock dividends are broken. When this dividend was declared during the COVID pandemic in 2020, ABA’s price was approximately P1.05/share. Since the dividend declaration, the shares have spent nearly two years flying up the charts. In 2022 alone, the stock rose more than 250%, from P0.82/share to P2.92/share. In 2023, the stock rose 30%, recovering from a Christmas crash to go from P2.06/share to P.69/share. By mid-2023, though, the stock was in absolute freefall. It fell 59% in just one month (August 2023), and has been on a slow and steady downward trend since then. Anyone who bought ABA for the stock dividend has been denied years of potentially profitable exit trades and ridiculous multiples. Who is to blame for this? Did ABA fumble the paperwork needed to process this approval in a timely manner, or did the SEC sit on the original application and then approve something by email four years late, under some “late is better than never” end-of-year inbox cleanup routine? What remedies do minority shareholders have to hold anyone accountable for their damages?

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.