Eagle Cement prices IPO at P15 per share

Eagle Cement Corp., the cement company of the Ang family, has priced its initial public offering at P15 per share to raise as much as P8.62 billion.

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) and the Securities and Exchange Commission have already approved the company’s IPO application.

Eagle Cement, which will be traded under the ticker symbol “EAGLE,” plans to sell 500 million common shares by way of primary offer with an over-allotment option of up to 75 million secondary shares.

The offer period is on May 16 to May 22 while the target listing date is on May 29.

“We are very pleased with the bookbuilding results. The issue was well received by institutional investors. This is a strong indication of their confidence in Eagle’s fundamentals and potential to be the major driver in the cement industry,” said SB Capital president Noel Dayrit.

SB Capital is one of the lead underwriters of Eagle Cement’s IPO.

The company is the only 100 percent Filipino owned cement company in the country and is set to become one of the Philippines’ largest cement manufacturers in terms of capacity by next year.

According to its registration statement, proceeds from the IPO will be used to partially finance the construction of the company’s two million metric ton cement plant in Cebu, which will be its fourth production line.

The funds to be raised from the offering will also be used to build strategic marine terminals in the Visayas and Mindanao region to facilitate quicker distribution of Eagle Cement’s products in a bid to capture the Visayas and Mindanao cement market.

Eagle Cement’s production capacity currently stands at 5.1 million tons a year. Once its third production line in Bulacan is complete in 2018, the firm’s capacity will increase to 7.1 million tons per annum, making it the country’s leading cement company in terms of capacity.

The completion of the Cebu plant in 2020 will further increase the firm’s capacity to 9.1 million tons of cement per year.

Aside from SB Capital, Eagle Cemennt appointed China Bank Capital Corp and Philippine National Bank Capital and Investment Corp., as joint issue managers, lead underwriters, and bookrunners for the IPO.