CREC likely to move IPO to Q2

The planned initial public offering (IPO) of Citicore Renewable Energy Corp., potentially the first IPO of 2024, may be moved to the second quarter of the year in line with the expected lowering of interest rates by then.

This is also to give proponents more time to fulfill some remaining regulatory and documentary requirements, industry sources said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the corporate regulator, has already approved last month the registration statement of Citicore covering 10 billion common shares.

Citicore will offer to the public up to 2.9 billion common shares at a maximum price of P3.88 apiece. The offer will include additional 435 million outstanding common shares for overallotment.

Based on the timeline submitted by Citicore to the SEC, the IPO was planned to run from March 4 to 8 with a target to list its shares on the Main Board of the Philippine Stock Exchange on March 15.

However, this may now be extended to complete some remaining requirements and to be in sync with possible easing of interest rates after the US Federal Reserve hinted that its first rate cut may happen in May.

The company has yet to announce a revised timeline.

Citicore expects to net more than P10.71 billion from the primary offer, to be used for capital expenditures and pipeline development for solar energy power plants, and general corporate purposes.

The company tapped UBS AG as sole global coordinator and joint bookrunner, and BDO Capital & Investment Corp. as domestic lead manager and joint bookrunner for the IPO.

Citicore is a pure-play renewable energy platform that directly and through its subsidiaries and joint venture manages a diversified portfolio of renewable energy generation projects, power project development operations and retail electricity supply in the Philippines.

Its parent company Citicore Power is a direct subsidiary of Citicore Holdings Investment Inc. (CHII), which in turn, is the parent company of listed construction and engineering company Megawide Construction Corp.

The company commenced its operations in 2015 through its parent company, Citicore Power.

Since it commenced operations, it completed three greenfield solar projects, which contributed a total installed capacity of 103.0MW of renewable energy to the Philippine energy mix.