Major property developer Ayala Land Inc. increased its stake in Prime Orion Philippines Inc., or POPI, to 55 percent by acquiring another 4.14 percent worth P496.8 million.
POPI said in a disclosure to the stock exchange Ayala Land bought 202.774 million shares in the company from Genez Investments Corp. through a special block sale completed Friday.
The company purchased the shares at P2.45 apiece, a 7.5-percent discount to POPI’s closing price of P2.68 on Friday.
Ayala Land owned a 51.05-percent stake in POPI prior to the block sale.
Ayala Land in February 2016 completed the acquisition of a majority stake in POPI through a subscription to the company’s shares worth P5.6 billion in line with the company’s strategy to expand its leasing business.
The deal enabled Ayala Land to get a hold of Tutuban Center, a bargain retail complex that sits on a 20-hectare property. The property will also be location of the North South Railway Project Transfer Station that will interconnect with the LRT 2 West Station.
Tutuban Center has 60,000 square meters of gross leasable space. The company plans to expand its retail complex to achieve 200,000 square meters of leasable space over the next two to three years.
Ayala Land earlier said it planned to redevelop Tutuban Center into a large-scale mixed-use community with the introduction of additional uses, like dorminatories, schools, hospitals and office logistics.
Ayala Land has been strengthening its recurring income business by developing more shopping malls, office and hotels.
By 2020, Ayala Land aims to obtain 50 percent of total revenues from recurring businesses and the other half from residential sales.
Ayala Land plans to achieve the target by tripling the size of shopping malls to 3.6 million square meters, office space to 1.8 million gross leasable area and hotel and resorts to 6,000 room keys all by 2020.
