PSE sets date for its stock rights offering

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will be launching its stock rights offering of February 26, 2018 after setting the offering price and entitlement ratio on February 9.

In a disclosure, the PSE said shareholders as of the record date of February 15 will be entitled to subscribe to shares in the offering. The ex-rights date will be on February 12 while the offering period will be from February 26 to March 2, 2018.

Proceeds from the stock rights offering will be used by the PSE to fund its acquisition of additional shares in PDS Holdings Corporation as well as for its capital expenditure requirements.

The PSE expressed confidence that it will be able to fully comply with Securities Regulation Code (SRC) requirement to reduce the ownership of its broker shareholders to 20 percent after the stock rights offering. The bourse assured that it “has in place several layers of control in the system that will monitor the level of ownership and restrict purchases to maintain the ownership level at 20 percent.”

It added that the exchange is “determined to complete all the phases of its Compliance Plan, particularly the stock rights offering, being one of its major components.”

“Thus, the Company is hopeful that it will obtain the exemptive relief from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) soon, which will then pave the way for the finalization of the acquisition of additional shares in PDS Holdings Corporation,” said the PSE.

The PSE has already signed share purchase agreements with various shareholders of PDS, which owns the fixed income securities exchange, and is just awaiting the granting of exemptive relief from the SEC before these agreements will take effect.

The bourse needs exemptive relief from the SEC since it intends to own a majority, it not all, of the shares of the PDS which also has an ownership cap of 20 percent for any industry group under the SRC.