Del Monte’s share offering priced at P17 per share

MANILA, Philippines— Del Monte Pacific Ltd. (DMPL) has priced a follow-on offering of common shares to the public at P17 per share, in what is part of a series of fund-raising activities to cut debt stock arising from its big US acquisition.

The offer was priced at a premium of about 1.65 percent to the volume-weighted average price for trades done on both the Philippine Stock Exchange and the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited on Tuesday, the day on which the underwriting agreement was signed. Compared to the closing price of its shares at the PSE alone on that day, this represented a discount of about 1.85 percent.

SCREENGRAB from www.delmontepacific.com

DMPL also cut down the price from the maximum level of P22.84 per share earlier indicated.

The company is offering 5.5 million primary shares, allowing the company to raise a modest amount of P93.5 million from this offering, which will run from October 16 to 22. The market capitalization of DMPL after this offering will amount to P29.76 billion.

It was earlier disclosed that DMPL plans to reduce debt by $520 million through a mix of public stock, perpetual preferred shares and stock rights offerings.

DMPL is raising funds to cut additional debt incurred for the acquisition of the consumer food business of the privately held American corporation Del Monte Foods (DMFI) for $1.675 billion, a deal which, however, allowed the local firm to break into the US market and reunite with its US mother brand.