Mynt, the parent of Philippine mobile wallet GCash, has lined up more than 20 cornerstone investors, including BlackRock and T. Rowe Price, for its planned initial public offering, according to a preliminary prospectus seen by Reuters.
The IPO could raise up to 80.3 billion pesos ($1.3 billion), making it the largest share sale on record in the Philippines if priced at the top end of the range. It would surpass Monde Nissin’s 55.89 billion peso IPO in 2021.
The offering would provide a much-needed boost to the Philippine equity market, where companies have raised just $227.1 million through equity capital markets deals so far this year, according to LSEG data.
Cornerstone investors have agreed to buy 36.5 billion pesos of shares in the offering, the preliminary prospectus dated September 22 showed.
They include Capital Research and Management Company, Citadel Multi-Strategy Equities Master Fund Ltd, FIL Investment Management (Hong Kong), HSBC Global Asset Management, International Finance Corporation, Lazard Asset Management, among others.
Domestic cornerstone investors include ATRAM Trust Corporation, BPI Asset Management and Trust Corporation, China Bank Capital Corporation, among others, as the preliminary prospectus showed.
Cornerstone investors are large institutions that commit to buying shares before an IPO opens to the public.
Their commitments would account for nearly 68.8% of the shares on offer, excluding any shares sold under an overallotment option.
Mynt plans to sell up to 8.03 billion shares at up to 10 pesos each. An overallotment option covering up to 1.2 billion additional shares could increase the deal size to about 92.3 billion pesos, according to the preliminary prospectus.
At the top of the price range, Mynt would be valued at about 669 billion pesos.
The company said proceeds from the sale of new shares would be used to expand its digital financial services business, develop products and for general corporate purposes.
The offer period is scheduled to run from October 6 to October 12, according to the preliminary prospectus. The final price will be set after the close of the offer, with trading on the Philippine Stock Exchange expected to begin on October 20.
Reuters
