Listed firm Synergy Grid and Development Philippines Inc. (SGP), which holds a controlling stake in transmission firm National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), posted a record achievement following its inclusion in the MSCI World Small Cap Index just barely six months after its follow-on offering (FOO) in November last year.

The MSCI indexes measure stock market performances across specific jurisdictions; and the selection of listed companies would often be anchored on ease of trading for their shares and there shall also be high level of liquidity.

Synergy Grid noted that with its current market capitalization of roughly $1.24 billion, the company is placed “above the median capitalization of the MSCI World Small Cap Index,” – the updated MSCI index of which had been at the level of $963.76 million as of April 29 this year.

According to Robert Coyiuto Jr., vice chairman of SGP, “the inclusion of Synergy Grid in the index in a short amount of time from its listing late last year is proof of the notable performance of its main asset, NGCP.”

He added that such milestone “is an affirmation that the route taken to list at the time we did was well-received by the market.”

In particular, the MSCI World Small Cap Index factors in the small cap representation of at least 23 developed markets (DM) countries – and the index typically covers 14-percent of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country.

SGP has indirect control of 60-percent of the outstanding capital stock of NGCP as well as effective equity interest of 40.2-percent. By far, the transmission company stands as the sole operating asset of SGP.

The Sy-led firm carried out its FOO last year via the offer of 1,053,500,000 primary common shares – and that also came with an overallotment option of up to 101,000,000 secondary shares which had been priced at P12 per common share.

The proceeds from the stock offering had been aligned to partly bankroll the P440 billion investment plan cast by NGCP, chiefly to expand and upgrade various transmission facilities that were blueprinted for implementation in various parts of the country.

The transmission company programmed 211 projects taking off from the drawing board within a span of 13 years - and these had all been targeted “to support the growing electricity demand in the country and to make the power backbone continuously reliable.”

The reinforcement of the country’s power transmission highway is a critical anchor to the ‘energy transition agenda’ of the Philippines – not just to render the power system reliable, but also to underpin the integration of massive-scale renewables in the country’s electricity networks.

NGCP is also currently concretizing the country’s long time dream of having a nationwide-linked single power grid to enable the sharing of energy resources across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao grids – and this is seen realized upon the commercial operation of the Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP) which is targeted by the end of this year.