Ayala unit lists shares

Ayala-led global electronics manufacturing services (EMS) firm Integrated Micro-Electronics Inc. (IMI) is on track to attain its goal of breaching $1 billion in revenues by 2016 amid a faster-than-industry growth trajectory, top officials said.

IMI recently raised P1.6 billion from a public offering of shares four years after listing on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) by way of introduction, becoming a truly public company as the 215 million new shares sold at P7.50 each were listed on Friday. IMI, however, closed lower at P7.46 in line with the general market slump ahead of the anticipated landfall of typhoon “Ruby.”

“We’re very proud to have completed our offer successfully, especially with strong interest and support from the investment community,” IMI president Arthur Tan said, adding that IMI was for those who “want to be able to hedge investment from a purely domestic exposure to one that allows you to capitalize on global growth.”

“IMI has come a long way since its listing by way of introduction in 2010. In the last four years, its operations and revenues have steadily increased, boosting its position as a global manufacturing pillar for the Ayala group,’ said IMI chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala.

As one of the world’s biggest EMS providers, IMI is focused on high-growth, nontraditional product segments with high quality requirements and opportunities for customization such as those found in automotive, telecommunications infrastructure, industrial and medical electronic markets. It ranks 21st on the latest top 50 list of top EMS providers in the world, according to the publication Manufacturing Market Insider.

Tan said that while its peers in the country were producing low-tech products, IMI was already way beyond semiconductor production.

“People don’t come to us because we’re going to provide cheap products. They come to us because of the capabilities we have to offer a complete product solution for them. And since the country is actually more a consumption country rather than a manufacturing country, it’s hard to appreciate it,” Tan said.

For instance, he said that IMI was manufacturing the electronic products inside the cars or the sensors inside the most advanced CT scan devices in the hospital or the radiation sensors used in power plants.

EMS companies are those that design, assemble, produce and test electronic components and printed circuit board assemblies for original equipment manufacturers.

IMI intends to use the net proceeds from its stock offering for its capital expenditure, business expansion, refinancing of debt and general corporate purposes.

Jerome Tan, IMI chief finance officer, said the goal of hitting $1 billion by 2016 was feasible given the company’s growth trajectory. “If you look at our compounded growth rate in the last four years, it’s at about 11 percent. The industry is growing by 6 to 6.5 percent so we’re growing much faster.”

IMI earlier reported that its nine-month revenues expanded by 19 percent year-on-year to $650.1 million, resulting in the quadrupling of net income during the period to $21 million.

While IMI did not use the overallotment option to upsize the offering to as much as P3 billion, Tan said the company would keep the leeway to issue additional shares in the future.

“The thinking of the major shareholders is that the value of the company could improve so they didn’t push to get the oversubscription underwritten. But we do have plans. We don’t want to raise too much that we don’t have anything specific for. We expect that as we go through the year, we’ll be able to deploy the proceeds,” Tan said.