Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings, Inc. (SP) is offering to purchase any shares from SP New Energy Corporation’s (SPNEC) Stock Rights Offering (SRO) that are not fully-paid to ensure its completion by March.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, SPNEC said it is committed to complete its SRO to enable its share swap with SP.
Based on indications of interest for SPNEC’s shares, the company said it believes that the partially paid SRO shares will be fully paid.
“To the extent any of these are not yet fully paid when due, as assurance for the completion of the SRO, SP has offered to purchase any remaining shares as of March 2023 from SPNEC at the SRO price of P1.50 per share,” SPNEC said.
SP Founder Leandro Leviste said “We are grateful to our public shareholders for believing in the value of our company’s shares.”
“With the improved market conditions this year, we hope this will bring forth a positive feedback loop, by enabling the completion of our SRO, and in turn enabling our share swap, private placements and project developments,” he added.
SPNEC’s closing price as of February 8 2023 was P1.54 per share, 2.67 percent above its SRO price.
In September 2022, SPNEC conducted a Stock Rights Offering for 1.88 billion shares, of which 1.13 billion were fully paid and 748.02 million were partially paid, with 25 percent down-payments.
The due date on the balance of the partially paid shares was initially set on Dec. 5 2022 and was moved to March 5, 2023. As of Dec. 22, 2022, the company had 578.77 million remaining partially paid SRO shares.
The completion of the payments for this number of shares by March 2023 may result in an additional P651 million in proceeds to fund SPNEC’s ongoing project developments.
As part of its share swap, SPNEC would issue 24.37 billion additional shares in exchange for projects of SP, in addition to its existing 10 billion shares.
This will result in SPNEC having 34.37 billion shares outstanding, which would require the public to own a total of at least 6.87 billion shares to achieve an at least 20 percent public float.
Assuming 4.75 billion shares held by the public after recent private placements, SPNEC would need to increase its public float by at least another 2.12 billion shares.
The company has disclosed that it is working on further private placements to accelerate its project developments and broaden SPNEC’s shareholder base in preparation for its share swap.