PSE oks GT Capital’s P12B preferred shares offer

THE PHILIPPINE Stock Exchange has approved an offering by Ty family-led conglomerate GT Capital Holdings Inc. of as much as P12 billion worth of perpetual preferred shares.

Based on an offering memorandum issued by the Philippine Stock Exchange on Friday, the offering will run from Oct. 17 to 21 while the listing date is tentatively set for Oct. 27.

Based on documents from the SEC, the conglomerate plans to offer at least 8 million perpetual preferred shares at an issue price of P1,000 per share. This will allow GT Capital to raise at least P8 billion from this offering.

The offering can be upsized by 4 million preferred shares in case of oversubscription, bringing the maximum issuance to P12 billion.

A perpetual preferred stock has no maturity date and will continue paying dividends indefinitely until the issuer, GT Capital, exercises its option to redeem the shares.

The perpetual preferred shares have two series. For series A, GT Capital has the option to redeem in whole but not a part of the shares on the fifth anniversary of the issue date or any dividend payment date thereafter. For series B, GT Capital has option to redeem them starting the 7th year.

The synthetic maturity will thus be five and seven years, which will be the basis of the dividend pricing which will be done on Oct. 13.

GT Capital expects to use proceeds from the offer to refinance by the fourth quarter of this year previous acquisitions that were earlier paid through bridge financing. Part of the proceeds will likewise be used for other strategic acquisitions.