Bank of Commerce, the financial arm of conglomerate San Miguel Corp., said Wednesday it would reallocate the remaining P940 million from its initial public offering proceeds to lending activities instead of the initial plan of spending it for information technology purposes.
The bank said in a disclosure to the stock exchange it utilized more than 70 percent of its P3.367-billion proceeds from the IPO for loans and securities purchases. It said the bank management and board revisited the planned use of the remaining P940 million for IT capital expenditure requirements.
“Negotiations with IT vendors indicate that the payment scheme for IT investments will stretch over multiple years, and with the significant increase in BankCom’s profit run rate over the past year, IT investments can already be fully funded by revenues from its regular banking operations,” the bank said.
“Given this, BankCom’s board of directors approved during its meeting on Oct. 25, 2022 the reallocation of the remaining P940 million from the IPO proceeds for lending activities beginning in the fourth quarter of 2022,” it said.
The bank earlier said it was ramping up investments in technologies to optimize operations and fuel growth ahead of a resurgent economy post-pandemic. The bank said it completed the systems upgrade of key services, including treasury, trust banking and anti-money laundering.
The bank also invested in improving its digital capabilities through its enhanced mobile banking and web platform BankCom [personal], which has been made more secure and convenient through biometrics and a suite of new features — all part of the P1.2-billion spending it rolled out in 2019.
Bank of Commerce posted a 191-percent increase in net income in the first half to P886.91 million from P304.37 million a year ago, driven by the strong performance of core businesses.
Gross income reached P3.67 billion, or 22.95 percent higher than P2.98 billion it booked in the same period last year.