By Zinnia B. Dela Peña
The Philippine Star 03/17/2007
The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has approved the listing of Pacific Online Systems Corp., a gaming firm jointly owned by Belle Corp. and Abacus Consolidated Resources Inc., to raise as much as P370.14 million from a primary and secondary offering of shares.
Based on documents filed with the PSE, Pacific Online will list an initial 191.05 million shares on the first board, 11.8 million of which shall be offered through an initial public offering (IPO) and 28 million to be issued on a secondary basis.
The shares will be priced at P8.50 to P9.30 each, equivalent to a price-earnings ratio of 9.5 times to 10.4 times projected 2007 earnings.
Tapped as lead underwriters for the IPO are Asian Alliance Investment Corp. and BDO Capital & Investment Corp.
The offer price will be set on March 21 following a bookbuilding program to start on March 19. The domestic roadshow will run from March 26 to 30 while the listing of the shares has been tentatively scheduled on April 12.
Pacific Online president and vice-chairman Willy Ocier said the IPO will push through despite the volatile markets.
"The market will have its ups and downs but this thing has to go down. Our business is recession-proof. The IPO has been in the works for quite sometime and we will push through whether the market is good or bad," Ocier said.
"We will know by next week whether how well the IPO is received by the market. But initial indications show it’s good. Clients are asking for IPO allocations," Ocier added.
Ocier, however, said the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to approve the company’s IPO application.
Excluding proceeds from the secondary offering, Pacific Online expects to raise P100.3 million to P109.74 million through the maiden offering of its shares to the public.
Proceeds from the offering will be used mainly to finance capital expenditures which include the upgrade of its lottery infrastructure.
As of December last year, Pacific Online has deployed a total of 980 online lottery terminals. It plans to roll out 1,520 terminals by the end of this year and another 1,820 in 2008.
The company intends to increase by approximately 15 percent the areas open for online lottery by deploying terminals and having agents in 50 unidentified municipalities.
In 2008, Pacific Online plans to deploy online terminals in 40 more municipalities to increase total penetrated area by another 10 percent.
Aside from this, the company also plans to implement EZ2 game in other areas in Visayas and Mindanao (Viz-Min), introduce a new weekly lotto game modeled after the United States’ Powerball game and increase the frequency draw of Super Lotto 6/49 and Lotto 6/42 from twice to thrice weekly.
Pacific Online is engaged in leasing of online equipment to the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) for lottery operations in the Visayas and
Based on its financial statements for 2006, Pacific Online posted a net profit of P50.5 million on revenues of P413.6 million. Its assets amounted to P394.88 million while shareholders’ equity stood at P121.98 million.
Pacific Online has its data center in
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