Philippine National Bank, the fifth-largest lender in terms of assets, will offer 276.6 million common shares through a stock rights offering to strengthen its common equity tier 1 ratio and enable it to sustain asset growth.
PNB said in a disclosure to the stock exchange Tuesday it amended the number of shares to be offered through the SRO from the previous 300 million to 276,625,173.
“On June 17, 2019, the bank advised the exchange that it will offer a total of 276,625,173 common shares. The exchange’s approval of the listing of the offer shares is subject to the bank’s compliance with all applicable post-approval requirements of the exchange,” it said.
“The amendment was made to update the number of shares to be offered,” it said.
On May 29, 2019, the exchange approved the application of the bank for the listing of additional shares of up to 300,000,000 common shares covering the stock rights offering to all stockholders as of the proposed record date of June 21, 2019.
The bank said it was expecting to raise gross proceeds of up to P12 billion from the offer. The offer price will be determined on pricing date by computing the volume-weighted average price of the bank’s common shares on the PSE for each of the 15 consecutive trading days immediately prior to (and excluding) the pricing date.
Earlier, PNB said it was allotting around P4 billion for digitization this year to seize growth opportunities in the growing economy.
PNB president and chief executive Wick Veloso said in a briefing the bank would earmark 50 percent or P2 billion for information-technology related projects. The bank in 2018 just spent 40 percent of its capital expenditures for information technology.
“We want to capture the growth opportunities in the provinces. The opportunities in the provinces are very significant, not only in Metro Manila,” Veloso said.
To fund the P4-billion capex, Veloso said the bank planned to embark on capital-raising initiatives, such as stock rights offering and FCDU offshore funding.
The bank in April last year successfully raised $300 million of five-year fixed rate senior notes in Singapore and Hong Kong out of its $1-billion medium-term note program. It marked the first time that PNB tapped the international bond market for medium term dollar funding.