Bank of Commerce (BankCom) eyes to hold its initial public offering (IPO) between March 16 and 22 as it earned approval for its fundraising activity from the Philippine Stock Exchange.
The bank’s P3.51-billion IPO will have its official pricing today, March 11, with listing of the shares set tentatively on March 31.
The San Miguel Group-linked lender eyes to offer to the public 280.6 million primary common shares at an offer price of up to P12.50 apiece.
BankCom initially included in its offer 42.09 million secondary common shares to cover the greenshoe option, but was no longer mentioned in the lender’s latest prospectus.
BankCom, a unit of San Miguel Corp., said it will use the proceeds to fund its lending activities, acquire investment securities, and finance capital expenditure (capex) requirements in connection with the upgrading of its automated teller machine (ATM) fleet and its core banking system.
BankCom intends to allocate P1.8 billion for lending activities to increase its loan portfolio in 2022 in line with the strategy to increase interest income. It said loans will be primarily to corporate borrowers as well as some housing and auto loans.
A P922-million capex allocation will be spent between the second half of next year until 2026 to replace BankCom’s 273 existing ATMs with 144 cash recycling machines and 129 new version ATMs, and acquire 15 additional cash recycling machines and 12 cash deposit machines.
The allocation will also include acquisition of replacement for the bank’s existing Silverlake Integrated Banking Solution core banking system.
The balance will be used for acquisition of government securities that will beef up the bank’s liquidity, as part of its liquidity management to both generate interest revenue as well as to satisfy the high quality liquid asset requirements of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas under Basel III. – Ruelle Castro
