Due Diligencer: Buyback

Buyback. A. Soriano Corp. (market symbol: ANS) will continue to buyback its own shares which are listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange. A resolution approved by the board in September last year authorized Anscor Consolidated Corp. (ACC), a wholly-owned subsidiary, to undertake the acquisition “up to the extent of five percent of its outstanding capital stock.” ACC has long been buying back ANS shares. Its last acquisition was on February 23, 2007, when it bought 4,000 shares at P3.35 per share raising its holdings to 929,537,189 shares, or 37.181 percent.  As of September 30, 2006, Anscor placed the cost of ACC-held 911,994,259 ANS shares at over P1.046 billion.   Executive compensation. Bank of Philippine Islands said its top five executive officers will receive P104,529,347.09 (salary, P78,845,867.09; bonuses, P25,683,480) this year,  up eight percent from P96,786,432.49 (salary, P73,005,432.49; bonuses, P23.781 million) in 2006.  The bank said all other officers as group will get this year P2,346,857,792.30 in salary and P276,664,663.80 in bonuses. Last year, they received P2,173,016,474.35 in salary and  P256,170,9850 in bonuses. The bank’s 15 directors got a total of P18 million or P1.2 million each last year, the same amount as in 2005. In 2004, they received P1 million each. BPI’s executive compensation package includes shares availed of under the bank’s executive stock option plan. In 2005, the bank issued 10,568,445 shares to qualified executives.  Time to sell. EEI Corp., formerly Engineering Equipment Inc., has finally recovered from the huge losses it has piled up in the in the early 1980s, when it has been reporting deficits. As of September 2006, the company, which was acquired by the Yuchengco group from Benguet Corp., reported net income of P41.307 million and retained earnings of P103.641 million. With its return to profitability, it was time for chairman Rizalino Navarro, who owned 2,400,015 EEI shares, or 10 percent of outstanding shares, to unload. He sold 2.4 million shares at P4.46 on February 21, 2007, leaving him with 15 shares, which are enough to qualify him to sit in the company’s board.   Merger. Ayala Corp. sold Pure Food Corp. (PPC) to San Miguel Corp. in 2001 but retained PFC Properties Inc. Orphaned by the departure of the food unit, it became an AC subsidiary by distributing shares in PFC Properties as a property dividend. This was a corporate strategy, which other companies can possibly copy. In its coming annual stockholders’ meeting on March 30, 2007 at Intercontinental Hotel, the stockholders of PFC Properties will become stockholders of Ayala, the parent company, through merger. Ayala, which owns 99.85 percent of PFC Properties, said it will issue AC shares in exchange for 480,817 shares in the property firm held by minority stockholders at exchange value of P2.6201 per share. In explaining the swap, Ayala said: “This will allow PFC Properties shareholders a faster and more tax efficient way to dispose of their holdings because shares of an illiquid company are exchanged for shares in a public company. Shareholders will continue to share in the upside as the properties transferred to AC are sold as well as share in the appreciation of AC shares.”

 

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/03012007/companies05.html