Axelum Resources Corp., the country’s leading fully-integrated manufacturer of premium coconut products, increased its share buyback program to P800 million from P500 million.
Axelum said in a disclosure to the stock exchange Friday it also extended the share buyback program to Dec. 31, 2022.
The company said it would use cash from unrestricted retained earnings to buy back the shares. The shares will be placed under its treasury shares now totaling 196.772 million.
It said it would execute the buy-back program in open market through the trading facilities of the Philippine Stock Exchange.
“The buy-back program shall be implemented in an orderly manner and should not adversely affect the company’s and its subsidiaries’ prospective and existing projects,” said Axelum.
Axelum reported a 25-percent growth in first-quarter net income to P181.93 million from P145.6 million in the same period last year.
First quarter sales reached P1.67 billion, up 14 percent from P1.47 billion a year ago, driven by steady volumes and higher average selling prices of core product segments.
It said despite global logistics problem, it remained confident in achieving its growth trajectory this year on strong global demand for premium coconut products.
Axelum said to address the shipping situation, it contracted strategically located third-party storage centers to immediately support its aggressive manufacturing pipeline.
Axelum is expanding its main warehousing facility to increase storage capacity by 30 percent. The company plans to complete the expansion next year.
The company uses all the parts of the coconut in its production, resulting in a full-line of coconut products including coconut water, desiccated coconuts, coconut milk powder, coconut milk/cream, reduced fat coconut, sweetened coconut, coconut oil and other coconut products.