AGI to buyback B shares, sees RWM recovery

Alliance Global Group, Inc. (AGI), the investment holding company of tycoon Dr. Andrew L. Tan, is undertaking a two-year share repurchase program of its stocks worth up to R5 billion.

During the firm’s annual stockholders’ meeting, AGI President Kingson U. Sian said “we are undertaking this corporate action because we believe that our shares are grossly undervalued.”

“Our Group has been consistently profitable, with attractive growth prospects, and enjoys strong brand equity and therefore views this exercise as a means to enhance shareholder value over time,” Sian said.

This will be the second share buy back program undertaken by the group with Emperador being the first to start a R5-billion repurchase program.

“Right now its confined to Emperador and AGI. RWM (Travellers International Hotel Group) we have to fix the float which is at 10 percent,” added Sian.

Sian said RWM is almost fully recovered from the recent violent incident in ResortsWorld Manila which had forced it to shut down operations in the second floor of its three-level casino.

“Foot traffic is coming back. We are now at around 26,000 which is close to our average of 28,000 (before the incident),” said Sian adding that all their hotels are enjoying occupancy rates of around 95 percent.

While revenues took a hit because of the closure of the second floor of the casino, Sian said they will compensate for this with the opening of the third phase of the ResortsWorld development.

He said the closed second floor housed about 100 gaming tables catering to the middlemass market while the first floor served the mass market and the third floor is exclusive for VIPs.

“Phase 3 will have 650 tables when fully built up. We’re all looking at opening it first quarter next year. But there might be a chance that we can soft open in late December. So that should augment at least what we’ve lost in the second floor,” said Sian.

He noted that, “since phase three is three levels, we’ll open it one at a time” adding that the second floor of phase one will be converted to be part of the Newport mall.

AGI posted new levels of revenues and core net profit in 2016 of R139.6 billion and R22.8 billion, respectively. Consolidated EBITDA grew at a healthy rate of 9 percent year-on-year to R38.8 billion, while attributable net income rose another 6 percent to R14.8 billion.