Gaming investment company in voluntary trade suspension

Gaming investment firm Premium Leisure Corp., formerly Sinophil Corp., has gone on a voluntary trading suspension for the entire week as the company embarked on an international roadshow to place out as much as P6.9 billion worth of secondary shares to new investors.

Shareholders Belle Corp. and APC Group Inc.—both majority owned by Sy family—have received approval from their respective boards to sell up to 3.76 billion of their PLC shares, based on separate disclosures to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Friday. APC, for its part, owns 90 million of the shares to be sold to new investors.

The group started on Friday an international roadshow that will run throughout the week. A company source said a three-legged roadshow for PLC was set, taking off from Hong Kong, Singapore and ending in London. The source said the final issue size would depend on investor demand.

As of the last closing price of P1.84 each, the shares to be placed out is worth about P6.9 billion assuming that all secondary shares would be taken up by investors.

PLC, for its part, went on a voluntary trading suspension “to avoid speculative trading” during the time that Belle, APC and their subsidiaries or affiliates were undertaking the roadshow. The trading suspension will be lifted on Monday next week (Sept 29).

The Belle group had long indicated plans to trim its stake in PLC and earlier engaged the services of CLSA for this exercise, estimated to range between $150 million and $200 million.

PLC is now 89.4-percent owned by Belle with the infusion of the latter’s gaming assets. Belle wants to pare down its interest in Sinophil, which will own half of the gaming operations of the upcoming City of Dreams Manila, to make the subsidiary more attractive to investors.

Based on the maximum number of shares that PLC’s shareholders plan to unload, new investors can end up owning as much as 11.8 percent of the gaming firm’s outstanding stocks.

Sinophil earlier completed its acquisition of the gaming business of Belle, transforming into PLC. Likewise executed was the purchase by PLC of a 34.5-percent stake in lotto equipment provider Pacific Online Systems Corp. from Belle and the sale of non-gaming assets, including parcels of land and some club shares in Tagaytay Midlands Golf Club Inc., to Belle.

PLC has no capital expenditure requirements and has ruled out issuing new shares to raise money. The logical step seen was for its controlling shareholders to place out some of their shares to allow more investors to come in.