Keppel sets June 24 delisting; tender offer starts
Keppel Philippines Holdings Inc. (KPH) will make its P159-million exit from the local bourse on June 24, making it the first to delist this year amid the market’s “undervaluation” of its stocks.
KPH said in a regulatory filing that “no votes were cast by any shareholder against the voluntary delisting” during the company’s annual meeting on April 24.
Trading of KPH’s shares were suspended for an hour yesterday morning to allow shareholders to absorb the news.
This comes two months after KPH’s board of directors agreed to the voluntary delisting.
Kepwealth Inc., which owns 89.86% of KPH, began its tender offer to buy out the listed firm’s minority shareholders on Monday, with shares priced at P27.40 each. This is an 8.3-percent premium over KPH’s last closing price of P25.30.
The tender offer involves 5.81 million KPH shares. It will end on May 27 and will be settled on June 10.
Under the Philippine Stock Exchange Inc.’s (PSE) voluntary delisting rules, Kepwealth needs to obtain at least 95 percent of KPH’s shares before the latter can exit the bourse.
KPH, which listed on the PSE in 1987, was incorporated as a subsidiary of Singapore-based Keppel Corp. Ltd. It operated under the name Keppel Philippines Shipyard Inc. to handle ship repair and conduct shipbuilding activities.
It was later converted into an investment holding company that also has real estate interests.
Analysts earlier viewed KPH’s voluntary delisting as a way to increase its value, seeing that it was “very thinly traded, so maybe the parent company feels that it isn’t being valued correctly by the market.”
