Lopez Holdings Corp., the listed holding company of the Lopez Group, said Tuesday it is delisting from the Philippine Stock Exchange to consolidate and streamline the group’s corporate structure.
Lopez Holdings, formerly Benpres Holdings Corp., said in a disclosure the board authorized the filing of a petition for voluntary delisting of the corporation from the main board of the local bourse.
The company said unit First Philippine Holdings Corp. would make a tender offer to acquire a 20-percent to 45.56-percent stake in the company, representing 908.45 million to 2.07 billion shares of the total issued and outstanding common shares of Lopez Holdings.
Lopez Inc., the group’s ultimate parent company, will not participate in the tender offer.
The tender offer price was set at P3.85 per share, representing a 25-percent premium over the company’s closing price of P3.08 on Nov. 27.
“It is always a good sign when you see an offer for your shares with a significant premium over the market price. We will be happy for the shareholders who decide to avail of this opportunity to liquidate their investment,” Lopez Holdings president, chief operating officer and chief finance Salvador Tirona said.
“If FPH’s tender offer is successful, LPZ will be delisted as part of the Lopez Group’s effort to consolidate the ownership of Lopez Holdings and to streamline the Lopez Group’s corporate structure by reducing the number of Group holding companies currently listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange from two to just one,” Tirona said.
Lopez Holdings,along with FPH, will seek regulatory approval from various government agencies for the plan.
The tender offer is expected to start on Jan. 22, 2021 and end on Feb. 19, 2021,
Following the announcement, both Lopez Holdings and FPH voluntarily asked for trading suspension of their shares.
Lopez Holdings was listed in the PSE in November 1993 as Benpres. It has investments in FPH and ABS-CBN Corp.
The group announced in October that chairman emeritus Oscar Lopez and vice chairman Eugenio Lopez III resigned from their respective positions on personal reasons.
Lopez Holdings said net income attributable to equity holders of the parent declined by 93 percent in the first half to P275 million from P4.18 billion in the same period last year.
The weak first-half performance was largely due to lower revenues from all business units, higher costs that include one-off expenses related to the group’s COVID-19 response and share in the net loss reported by ABS-CBN’s media and entertainment businesses.
Congress rejected the application of ABS-CBN to renew its franchise.