Infrastructure conglomerate Metro Pacific Investments Corp. plans to tap the bond market by issuing up to P30 billion worth of bonds to partly finance its huge investment spending plan over the next couple of years.
Metro Pacific chief finance officer David Nicol said the company would file for bond shelf registration for up to P30 billion with corporate regulators, with an initial issue of P10 billion in 2018.
This will be company’s maiden bond issue.
“We are looking to do shelf registration of P30 billion to give us flexibility but we are not looking to draw more than P10 billion from that next year,” Nicol said.
Nicol also ruled out the possibility of the company raising funds through the equities market despite the steady increase in the conglomerate’s stock price.
He said instead of doing a share sale at the Metro Pacific level, the company was looking at selling a portion of its stake in various units.
“We discussed intensively how we would go about raising further cash and the board is determined to keep portfolio broadly, as it shaped and just shave down a little bit of each part of the group. But the group is going back to the capital to raise more equity at the Metro Pacific level,” Nicol said. Jenniffer B. Austria
Metro Pacific is in talks with a water company from Thailand for the possible sale of roughly 10-percent stake in water utility firm Maynilad Water Services Inc. for about P12 billion.
The process, however, is taking some time to complete because of regulatory issues.
Maynilad won an arbitration case against the Philippine government, but it has yet to receive P3.4 billion worth of claims due to delayed tariff adjustments.
“But as that issue comes to a close, we will also get closer to announcing selldown in Maynilad,” Nicol said.
Metro Pacific earlier said it would spend P820 billion in capital expenditures over the next five years to accelerate expansion of toll road, water, power and hospitals businesses.