Speculators sex up RCBC as Sy Group accumulates shares
What do Maybank ATR Kim Eng, UPCC, Wealth, BDO, and COL brokerages have in common?
The five had been the heaviest buyers of RCBC shares amid market speculation that the country’s 10th largest bank could be put on the block with the passing of taipan Alfonso Yuchengco on April 15.
The speculative rush had pushed the stock price from P39 to P58 on Monday, when RCBC finally issued an unequivocal denial to quash the rumors. Yesterday, RCBC was trading at the P56-57 range, even as daily trading volume had ebbed below the one million-daily level when Mr. AY was still hale and hearty.
Still, there had been a few tell-tale trends even before the speculative rush.
One, BDO Securities had been quietly accumulating RCBC shares over the years, with about half a million shares added to its pile from January to March 2017 alone.
According to the grapevine, the BDO/SM Group have altogether acquired the equivalent of six percent stake in the Yuchengco bank, a steady long-haul strategy that taipan Henry Sy had employed to acquire Chinabank.
Likewise the Government Service Insurance System had been bulking up on RCBC, adding over 2.5 million shares in two years up to March.
The majority of the available shares had apparently been coming from Citibank, which had pruned its RCBC holdings by nearly 5.5 million shares in the last two years, reducing the US financial intermediary’s stake to about the same level as BDO/SM Group’s.
Interestingly, taipan niece and stockbroker, Vivian Yuchengco, has stayed away from the speculative rush, her First Resources’ position on RCBC remaining at a paltry 29,115 shares for the past two years.
Her frenemy, stockbroker Robert Coyiuto Jr., has apparently also lost his combative mojo against the Yuchengcos, with his brokerage firm also going into sleep mode on RCBC.
Except for the unpleasant specter of vultures who could not even wait for the RCBC patriarch to be laid to rest, the renewed interest on the bank should be a happy problem for Yuchengco’s eldest daughter, RCBC chairman Helen Dee.
Overnight the value of the 51 percent Yuchengco bloc in RCBC had jumped by half to P41 billion.
And if the speculators read the tea leaves right, that valuation could easily triple on the P120-130 a share at 2.5 times price-to-book that RCBC could easily command should the Yuchengcos decide to entertain suitors.
Stated a simpler way, Dee and seven other Yuchengco siblings can expect to collect P10-11 billion each should they all say the magic word.
RSA son is next billionaire
A son of San Miguel president Ramon S. Ang is set to become the country’s next billionaire at age 37.
Eagle Cement president John Paul Ang personally owns over 85.7 million of the company shares, which should translate to about P1.37 billion in ready cash after the May 29 listing at P16 a share.
In addition to John Paul, his 28-year-old sister Monica, an Ateneo graduate like him, also works for the company, keeping an eagle eye on the company’s and his father’s finances as treasurer.
Another relative, cousin Manny Teng, a chemical engineering graduate of the University of Santo Tomas, takes care of the cement complex’s daily operations as general manager.
According to regulatory disclosures, RSA should himself be the recipient of a P1.2-billion cash windfall in the initial public offering, on top of him owning 88 percent of an P80-billion company outside of the sprawling San Miguel conglomerate.
Eagle Cement is ramping up production since its factories in Bulacan, Bataan, and a new plant in Cebu are the main concrete suppliers for the various multi-billion infrastructure projects that San Miguel is building for the government.
Heard through the grapevine
Two more mainland Chinese airlines will launch additional flights to the Philippines amid the pro-Beijing pivot of the Duterte administration.
Air China will launch on July 1 a thrice-weekly service between Hangzhou and Cebu.
Low-cost carrier Lucky Air, meanwhile, will also launch a thrice-a-week service between Kunming and Cebu, and a twicea-week service between Kunming and Manila.