Wilcon’s IPO, said Gabriel Lim, senior vice president and head of equities practice unit of BDO Capital and Investment Corp., is so far the largest maiden-share offering that sold all their shares to the domestic market.
“I think this is the litmus test of the increasing depth of the domestic capital markets. This has opened the doors for other issuers to brave an all-domestic offering,” Lim said.
Many of the previous larger IPOs only sell a portion of their maiden-share offering to the domestic market, mainly only up to P3 billion and the rest are being sold to the international market.
Wilcon made an IPO of its 1.39 million shares at an offer price of P5.05 per share. It raised P7.01 billion.
Wilcon’s shares closed last Friday at P5.33 per share, a 5.5-percent increase of its offer price.
“An international offer is good but it tends to be a larger portion of the offering and the international tranche is more susceptible to headwinds, so its more sensitive. Now that Wilcon has opened the doors with the P7-billion offering, we think we have leveled up as far as the market is concerned,” he said.
Justino Juan Ocampo, First Metro Investment Corp. EVP and group head of investment banking, said Wilcon’s IPO will be “a good cookie cutter” or a good template for future IPOs of this size.
“Its a major decision for Wilcon and Mr. [William] Belo [Wilcon’s chairman] to go pure domestic,” Ocampo said.
“The Wilcon order book included quality institutional names and offshore investors who were attracted by Wilcon’s very strong prospects. Despite the very high interest in the offering, the Belo family agreed to price the issue at an attractive level in order to ensure a healthy performance of the stock upon listing in the Philippine Stock Exchange.”
The offering received a strong demand from institutional investors. The entire offering was more than three times oversubscribed and saw orders being placed by institutional accounts from both domestic and offshore markets, he said.
FMIC acted as issue manager and joint lead underwriter for the transaction, while BDO Capital acted as joint lead underwriter.
Belo said the company has no plans to go overseas since its focus will be on growing its Visayas and Mindanao branches.
“This year we are doing eight branches; we opened one already; two are under construction; and five more are in the pipeline. So for sure, it is going to be much better. All these we will really see the big jump by 2018,” Belo said.
“Our growth every year was at 9 percent to 10 percent. Here, we are targeting mid-double-digit growth,” Belo said.
