While investors are shying away from daily trades at the Philippine Stock Exchange due to the ongoing corruption scandal, investor appetite for new offerings does not seem to be affected, as these have consistently seen strong demand.

“We’ve seen deals continue to be oversubscribed in the debt capital market space. So, I guess, that means investors are still there despite what’s happening here, said Security Bank Capital President and CEO Virgilio O. Chua in a media briefing.

He noted that “we’ve seen oversubscription, demand-wise, on the bonds and even preferred shares that we’re doing,” so the corruption scandal does not seem to have much effect on these offerings, and there have not been questions about it from early investors.

Chua also noted that, while the stock market has been weak in recent weeks, the Maynilad Water Services Inc. initial public offering is also oversubscribed, “so that’s a very good indication.”

“Actually, right now, we’ve seen a renewed confidence in terms of investments. We’ve seen institutional investors participate” even in private-public partnership infrastructure projects, said SB Capital Syndicate and Distribution Head Daisy S. Garcia.

She noted that “we do work with very reputable, large conglomerates such as San Miguel Corp. and Metro Pacific. We’re quite confident in terms of these PPP projects that the government does with the large corporations,” stressing that, “we don’t work with the small contractors, which are in question.”

Meanwhile, Chua is also bullish on investor appetite for renewable energy projects, following the recent lifting of foreign ownership limits and the introduction of the Green Energy Auction Program.

“What went well for this year is really the influx of project finance deals, particularly in the renewable energy space,” Chua said.

“There are two factors that contributed to that. One is basically the lifting of the foreign national investment limit on renewable energy projects. So, now foreigners can own 100 percent of RE projects. The second one is the introduction of the Green Energy Auction Program,” he added.

Chua said these factors spurred a lot of interest in the RE space, and roughly half of SB Capital’s revenues this year will be accounted for by project finance, mostly in the renewable energy project space.

“In fact, year-to-date we've already completed about four project finance deals, with a total aggregate capacity of close to four gigawatts already. And we expect to close (for the rest of the year) with another four project finance deals, which will raise total volume to close to six gigawatts,” he revealed.

SB Capital continues to be very bullish about renewable energy investments well into next year and Chua said “we are on track to meet the (Department of Energy’s) objective of hitting about 35 percent contribution mix of RE by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040.”

“We should end the year with about eight RE project financings. And, right now, we're working on about four to six already so that's spilling over to next year...

“We're practically meeting almost every big developer wanting to see if we can finance the project. So, that's how bullish we are on that industry,” he added.