Tycoon John Gokongwei sold $250 million (P11.7 billion) worth of shares in his listed conglomerate JG Summit Holdings Inc. as a part of estate planning.
JG Summit senior vice president Bach Johann Sebastian said in a text message the conglomerate sold 142.5 million secondary shares owned by Gokongwei via overnight placement of shares.
“Selling shareholder was Mr. John Gokongwei. Sale was for estate planning purposes,” Sebastian said.
The shares were sold at P82.10 per share, a 9.7-percent discount to the P92.10 close on Wednesday. As a result, the share price of JG Summit fell 9.6 percent to settle at P82.40 Thursday. UBS was the underwriter of the transaction.
After the transaction, Gokongwei, who sits as chairman emeritus of JG Summit, still had 58 million direct shares in the conglomerate.
JG Summit is one of leading conglomerates in the Philippines, with investments in food and beverage, real estate, air transportation, financial services, petrochemicals, telecommunications and power distribution.
Among JG Summit’s subsidiaries are JG Summit Petrochemical Corp.; CP Air Holdings Inc.; Universal Robina Corp.; Robinsons Land Corp.; and Robinsons Bank Corp.
The company also holds interest in Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Manila Electric Co.
JG Summit posted a 60.9-percent increase in first-quarter net income to P9.63 billion from P5.98 billion a year ago, boosted by double-digit growth in airline and petrochemical businesses.
Consolidated revenues grew 6.2 percent to P60.59 billion from P57.05 billion on the performance of core subsidiaries.
Revenues from core investments, however, declined, as dividend income received by the group dropped 34.6 percent to P1.03 billion from P1.57 billion on lower dividends declared by PLDT.
Equity in net earnings of associates, primarily from investments in UIC and Meralco, increased to P1.83 billion from P1.68 billion in the first quarter of 2015.
JG Summit earmarked P41.3 billion in capital expediters in 2016 primarily to finance capacity expansion of food manufacturing unit, construction of new malls, offices, hotels and residential projects of its property unit and fleet expansion of airline business.
The group already spent P11.1 billion in the first quarter.