Cement manufacturer Holcim Philippines, Inc. said Thursday it plans to delist from the Philippine Stock Exchange after a major shareholder increased its stake in the company, causing its public ownership to fall below 10 percent.
HPI said in a disclosure to the stock exchange it received a notice from Holderfin B.V. that it acquired 594.9 million shares in the company owned by Sumitomo Osaka Cement Co. Ltd. This is equivalent to 9.22-percent stake in HPI.
The deal was conducted via a block sale worth P2.3 billion, which translates into acquisition price of P3.92 per share.
Post-Acquisition, total shareholdings of Holderfin, a Dutch company, in HPI increased to 27.33 percent from 18.11 percent of the company’s outstanding capital stock.
This reduced HPI’s public float to 5.05 percent from 14.27 percent as Sumitomo shares were attributed to shares held by the public.
HPI said Holderfin would be unable to issue additional shares to the public sufficient to raise its public float to the required level given the prevailing market conditions.
“Holderfin is prepared to make a tender offer for all outstanding common shares of the company held by the public with the aim of subsequently conducting a voluntary delisting of the company’s common shares from the main board of the PSE,” HPI said.
“Given Holderfin’s willingness to conduct the tender offer and voluntary delisting, the company is carefully evaluating the feasibility and potential benefits of pursuing the voluntary delisting,” it said.
The PSE immediately implemented a trading suspension on HPI shares. Prior to the trading suspension, the price of HPI closed at P3.87 on Wednesday.
HPI owns and operates four cement production facilities and one cement grinding mill with total production capacity of 10 million metric tons.
The cement firm saw its net income decline by 63 percent in 2022 to P941.77 million from P2.56 billion in 2021 on higher fuel and energy cost.
HPI will be the third cement company to voluntarily delist from the PSE after Republic & Building Materials Inc. in 2016 and Eagle Cement Corp. in February.
This will make Cemex Holdings Philippines Inc. as the only cement firm listed on the local bourse.
