Villars to go into pre-need business
VILLAR family-led Golden Haven Memorial Park, the first local company to go public this year, plans to enter the pre-need business to complete its offering as a death care facility provider.
In an investors briefing on the company’s P778-million initial public offering on Wednesday, company chief operating officer Marybeth Tolentino unveiled Golden Haven’s expansion program, which included the establishment of its first memorial chapel and crematorium at the Exekiel complex in Las Pinas and its entry into the pre-need business.
“As the company expands its physical product portfolio, the need for death care-related financial services is an opportunity we do not remain blind to,” Tolentino said. “Pre-need planning services are also within the scope of future offerings that the company is looking to expand into, allowing it to play in all five segments of the death care sector.”
Golden Haven has made inroads in the memorial park and columbarium development. It derives 80 percent of its business from this. It now has eight memorial parks and five columbarium facilities nationwide. A new crematorium will open in Las Pinas.
The company’s older memorial parks are located in Las Piñas, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga, Iloilo and Bulacan while the two newest projects are in San Fernando, Pampanga and Bambang, Nueva Ecija.
It has P1.5 billion worth of inventory from the older parks and P1.2 billion from the new parks.
She said the company intended to cross-sell products by harnessing sister company Vista Land & Lifescapes’ network of agents, including those deployed to sell to overseas Filipinos.
To be an end-to-end death care facility provider, she said selling pre-need contracts would have to be part of the equation. This requires a separate license from the Insurance Commission.
Tolentino said the group was not yet sure at this time how the pre-need unit would be structured but she said this was now in the planning stage. “We’re looking at this end of this year or early next year,” she said.
In the meantime, Anton Lichauco of Asian Alliance Investment Corp. said the pricing of Golden Haven’s IPO—at P10.50 per share—was in line with the current trading multiples of comparable peers in the region. A peer is Nirvana Asia, a leading death care provider in Asia alongside Fu Shou Yuan, the largest provider of funeral services in China and Lung Yen Life Service, which dominates Taiwan’s cemetery and funeral services sector.
Golden Haven is raising P778.23 million from this IPO. The company was given authority to sell up to 74.117 million new common shares, which will bring 15 percent of its shares to public hands.
The IPO will run on June 16-22 while listing on the main board of the PSE is scheduled for June 29.Doris Dumlao-Abadilla
