Businessman Leando Leviste is buying 71.6 percent of listed Roxas Holdings Inc. (RHI) for P5 billion.
Leviste’s Countryside Investments Holdings Corp. has signed a term sheet with Manuel Pangilinan’s group for the purchase.
Pangilinan’s group holds a stake in RHI through First Pacific Natural Resources Holdings BV and First Agri Holdings Corp.
Leviste in a social media post of his company Solar Philippines Project Holdings Inc. said Countryside’s investment will help Roxas Holdings “service debt to avoid bankruptcy, increase tax revenues of the municipality of Nasugbu, and create more and better jobs for the benefit of local farmers and former sugar industry workers.”
The post, however, did not elaborate on the terms of the sale, whether or not Leviste is adding capital into RHI or is buying an existing stake.
Roxas Holdings currently has P4.4 billion debt and P1.4 billion of trade payables.
RHI is 20.57 percent-owned by Roxas and Co. Inc., (RCI) in which Leviste recently acquired close to 15 percent and had become the largest individual shareholder of the company.
The land of RHI is beside the approximately 2,494 hectares owned by RCI. RCI was recently served a notice of collection and threatened with foreclosure over unpaid real property taxes by the municipality of Nasugbu. This comes amid a longstanding land dispute between RCI and an estimated 50,000 residents and agrarian reform beneficiaries.
Solar Philippines said the investment in RHI and RCI form part of Countryside’s plan to invest over P5 billion to develop Batangas, Leviste’s home province.
Leviste will fund this investment from the proceeds of the sale of shares in SP New Energy Corp. (SPNEC) to Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen) which, along with Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) have purchased shares in SPNEC for P20.4 billion to date. Both MGen and MPIC are chaired by Pangilinan.
Most of SPNEC’s assets are in Nueva Ecija, where the company is developing a 3,500-hectare solar project.
SPNEC also owns and operates a 63 MW solar farm in Calatagan, a neighboring town of Nasugbu, Batangas. In an earlier interview, Leviste said that some of the lands of Roxas Holdings would be suitable for solar farm development.
