| By Donnabelle L. Gatdula (The Philippine Star) Updated March 28, 2011 12:00 AM |
MANILA, Philippines - The National Government is mulling the possibility of delisting the shares of state-owned PNOC-Exploration Corp. at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), top energy official said.
Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras told reporters that this option was mulled to comply with the rule of the (PSE).
PNOC-EC, a subsidiary of Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC), is currently preparing to comply with the minimum 10- percent public ownership for listed companies imposed by the PSE.
But Almendras pointed out that if complying with this rule will put PNOC-EC at a disadvantage, it may be prudent to just delist the shares at the stock market.
Almendras, however, is still studying other options that is why it is temporarily putting on hold its secondary shares offering. “It’s on hold. The board wants to study it, it’s about the timing to do a secondary offering with all the instability in the global markets, because we expect a lot of foreign companies to be interested in that. It’s not a privatization, it’s a decision to either comply with the (rules),” he said.
“So the option is do you comply, and continue to be listed or do you delist? If I’m gonna sell my shares at a price which I think is less than what I actually think it is, why would I sell it?”, he added.
PNOC Exploration’s shares of stock are 99.79 percent owned by the government through PNOC, with the remaining 0.21 percent held by public shareholders. Its shares are selling at P24 per share as of Friday.
The company has investments in several oil and gas and coal exploration contracts. It is also involved in petroleum trading.
“Why sell at that (P24 per share price) price? If according to my calculations, we just declared a P3 billion dividend. We are accountable to the shareholders and in this case the shareholder is the republic of the Philippines. It will be unfair if we sell the shares at a price lower than our valuations simply because that’s the ongoing market price,” Almendras said.
Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras told reporters that this option was mulled to comply with the rule of the (PSE).
PNOC-EC, a subsidiary of Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC), is currently preparing to comply with the minimum 10- percent public ownership for listed companies imposed by the PSE.
But Almendras pointed out that if complying with this rule will put PNOC-EC at a disadvantage, it may be prudent to just delist the shares at the stock market.
Almendras, however, is still studying other options that is why it is temporarily putting on hold its secondary shares offering. “It’s on hold. The board wants to study it, it’s about the timing to do a secondary offering with all the instability in the global markets, because we expect a lot of foreign companies to be interested in that. It’s not a privatization, it’s a decision to either comply with the (rules),” he said.
“So the option is do you comply, and continue to be listed or do you delist? If I’m gonna sell my shares at a price which I think is less than what I actually think it is, why would I sell it?”, he added.
PNOC Exploration’s shares of stock are 99.79 percent owned by the government through PNOC, with the remaining 0.21 percent held by public shareholders. Its shares are selling at P24 per share as of Friday.
The company has investments in several oil and gas and coal exploration contracts. It is also involved in petroleum trading.
“Why sell at that (P24 per share price) price? If according to my calculations, we just declared a P3 billion dividend. We are accountable to the shareholders and in this case the shareholder is the republic of the Philippines. It will be unfair if we sell the shares at a price lower than our valuations simply because that’s the ongoing market price,” Almendras said.
No comments:
Post a Comment