The Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (PT&T) is seeking regulatory approval for its plan to resume trading in its shares of stock in the first half of this year after a long voluntary suspension, PT&T President and CEO James Velasquez said.
The trade resumption, if approved, would end the company’s two-decade voluntary suspension of its shares.
“The plan is to be able to do that [resume trading] within the year. So hopefully, our objective will be within the first half,” Velasquez said in a chance interview last week.
Velasquez said the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) hadn’t yet stamped its approval because “a few things we need to complete.”
But, Velasques said, “I would say 90 percent of what we need to do has been completed. So we are in the tail end of that.”
In December 2004, PT&T voluntarily suspended its share trading due to non-compliance with disclosure and reportorial requirements, which the PSE required.
The company, amid a trading suspension, completed a debt-to-equity conversion.
The successful debt-to-equity conversion helped eliminate a capital deficiency of P9.3 billion, reduce the company’s liabilities, and strengthen its capital position, resulting in a turnaround of over 100 percent year over year.
PT&T said that in November 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the company’s increased authorized capital stock from P3.8 billion to P12.6 billion.
This increase also allowed the partial settlement of statutory obligations, salaries, wages, and other employee benefits from escrow accounts as of December 2023.
Last week, SecureLink Networks Inc., a technology company in a joint venture between PT&T, Australian firm Netlinkz Ltd., announced plans to build a technology lab in the Philippines focused on the local development of its Virtual Secure Network Plus (VSN+) technology.
