The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the P7.7-billion initial public offering of mass housing developer Profriends Group Inc.
Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed Profriends would offer up to 385.75 million common shares at up to P20 per share.
The company plans to offer up to 70 percent or 270.025 million shares to qualified institutional buyers, 20 percent or 77.15 million shares to trading participants and the remaining 38.575 million shares to small local investors.
The final offer price will be disclosed on Dec. 15 while offer period will be from Dec. 17 to Jan. 9, 2015. Listing date was set on Jan. 14, making it the first company to list in 2015.
Several foreign and local investors have earlier expressed interest in investing in the company as cornerstone investors.
Profriends will have a 10.91- percent public float after the offering.
The company, based on applications with the SEC, planned to use P3.1 billion of the total proceeds to finance real estate projects in Cavite, Iloilo and Cagayan de Oro and P2.5 billion for additional equity investments in Williamton Holdings Inc.
Williamton is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amicus Holdings which handles the in-house financing requirements of Pro-friends homebuyers.
Another P1.24 billion will be set aside for land acquisition while the remaining P611 million will be allotted for other corporate purposes.
BDO Capital and Investments Corp. and First Metro Investments Corp. are the joint issue managers, lead underwriters and book runners for the offering.
Profriends owns 98.51 percent stake in Property Company of Friends Inc., which has built over 26,000 quality and affordable housing units in Cavite and Iloilo since February 1999.
It currently has four major estates, including the 1,435-hectare Lancaster New City in General Trias, Cavite; the 110-hectare Bellefort Estates in Bacoor, Cavite; the 72-hectare Carmona Estates in Cavite; and 170-hectare Iloilo Estate in Iloilo City.