Aboitiz holding firm lists P20-B bonds

The Aboitiz family’s flagship holding firm Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. (AEV) completed a P20-billion bond sale that would finance its initial foray into the airport segment.

The power, banking, food, property and infrastructure conglomerate listed the bonds on the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp. on Wednesday.

The long-term notes will mature on 2026 and 2029, paying fixed interest rates of 6.8725 percent and 7.5321 percent, respectively, a stock exchange filing on Wednesday showed.

Proceeds would be used to partly finance the acquisition of the Mactan Cebu International Airport concession, marking its entry into the airport business, and to refinance debts.

The Aboitiz family conglomerate earlier struck a P25 billion deal to acquire the air gateway from tycoon Edgar Saavedra’s Megawide Construction Corp. and India’s GMR Infrastructure.

Megawide-GMR redeveloped the Cebu Airport and turned it into a world-class gateway after winning the Public Private Partnership project in 2014.

Aboitiz Equity has tapped BDO Capital, BPI Capital, China Bank Capital, and First Metro Investment Corp. as the joint issue managers, joint lead underwriters, and joint bookrunners for the offer.

Aboitiz Equity’s infrastructure portfolio also includes economic estates, water services, cell sites and data centres.

The conglomerate earlier said net income from January to September rose by 9 percent to P21.4 billion, mainly due to a multibillion peso windfall from US dollar assets following the surging value of the greenback.

The power business accounted for 58 percent of earnings during the nine-month period, followed by financial services at 29 percent, and real estate at 10 percent with the remainder mainly driven by food and infrastructure.

Aboitiz Power profits alone jumped 24 percent to P19.5 billion, which was lifted by a P1.2 billion non-recurring gain from appreciation of the US dollar. Removing this, net income would have been 17 percent higher to P18.3 billion.

UnionBank’s net income shed 6 percent to P10.1 billon from January to September on lower trading gains. However, removing these, net revenues were up 37 percent to P36 billion. Loan loss provisions were also down 43 percent to P2.3 billion as asset quality improved.