STI to acquire business school PSBA

STI Education Systems Holdings Inc. is beefing up its network of schools in the country with the acquisition of the Philippine School of Business Administration (PSBA).

In a stock exchange filing, STI said its board ratified the execution of a term sheet between the company and PSBA Manila and PSBA Quezon City for the acquisition.

The term sheet covers STI’s takeover of the operations of PSBA, as well as its acquisition of licenses, trademarks, trade names and schoolrelated assets owned by PSBA.

STI said the implementation of the transaction is still subject to several conditions, including the execution of mutually acceptable definitive agreements, fulfillment of conditions precedent, the approval of the stockholders of PSBA and regulatory approvals.

PSBA is a privately owned institution of higher learning which conducts instructional programs exclusively in business education.

It was originally launched as a review and training center for certified public accountants under the name of Philippine Accounting and Taxation Training Services Inc.

STI of businessman Eusebio Tanco, meanwhile, is a listed owner of the largest network of private schools in the country.

Enrollment in its schools for school year 2023 to 2024 reached almost 120,000, up 27 percent from the 94,312 enrollees in school year 2022 to 2023.

A total of 103,982 of the entire student population of 119,543 were enrolled in schools operated by the STI Education Services Group as of end-December 2023.

The rest were students of iACADEMY and STI West Negros University.

In the first half of the current fiscal year, STI saw earnings more than double due to a rise in overall student enrollment.

Its net income reached at P517.8 million from July to December 2023, a 132 percent jump from the same period the previous year.

For the second quarter of its financial year alone, the company booked a net income of P498.1 million, almost double the P271 million recorded in the same three-month period in 2022.

STI’s revenues also grew by 36 percent to nearly P2 billion in the first semester from P1.4 billion.