Phoenix eyes P1.2B in additional equity

Publicly listed Phoenix Petroleum Philippines on Tuesday raised P1.2 billion in additional equity via the sale of 130 million shares by the oil company’s major shareholder.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Phoenix Petroleum said it had signed the placing agreement with Phoenix Petroleum Holdings Inc., which served as the selling shareholder, and CLSA Ltd., the placement agent for the offer and sale of the common shares at P9.40 each.

Evercore Asia Ltd., meanwhile, acted as financial adviser to Phoenix.

Phoenix Petroleum Holdings will pay the oil firm the amount it had raised from the private placement, representing its payment to an earlier subscription to Phoenix’s shares.

From 53 percent, Phoenix Petroleum Holdings’ holdings are now down to 41 percent.

“The book of demand was very comfortably covered at this price level. There was good participation from international as well as domestic accounts and hedge funds. More than 30 accounts participated in total for the equity placement,” CLSA said.

According to Phoenix, it intends to use the proceeds to repay some of its debt, which was taken out to fund the expansion of its retail network in the country.

Phoenix Petroleum claims to be the leading “independent”—or outside of the so-called Big Three brands Petron, Shell and Caltex—and fastest growing oil company today with an expanding network of operations nationwide.

Last year, Phoenix Petroleum posted a 16-percent growth in its consolidated net earnings to P643 million, from the P556 million it posted in 2011.

Consolidated revenues also rose by 27 percent to P35 billion for 2012, from the P27.5 billion it registered the previous year.

The oil company explained that a substantial portion of this revenue growth was brought about by the 26-percent increase in the volume of fuel sold during the year, and by the additional revenues amounting to P274 million, which came from the acquisition of Chelsea Shipping Corp. last year.

As of end-2012, the market share of Phoenix Petroleum grew to 6 percent from 5.5 percent as of end-2011.