SP New Energy Corp. (SPNEC) is working to bring back its publicly-owned shares to 20 percent.
Leandro Leviste, SPNEC chief executive officer, said this could be fast-tracked following the regulatory approval for the increase in the company’s authorized capital stocks to 50 billion from 10 billion.
“It’s being worked on in the past months. And thus, we were doing certain sales already,” Leviste said.
The Philippine Stock Exchange earlier this month suspended the trading of SPNEC after the publicly-owned shares of the company, also called public float, dropped below the PSE’s mandated 20 percent.
This developed after the company approved the share-swap between SPNEC and its mother company Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings Inc. for a number of solar power projects under development in exchange for 24.37 billion new shares in SPNEC. The shares will be sourced from the recently approved increase in capital stock as well.
The swap caused Solar Philippines’ stake in SPNEC to increase to 83 percent.
“We are working to increase our company’s public float as soon as possible. And also hope that we may resume trading even prior to our increasing on the public float. We are exploring ways and are hoping that we can exhaust possibilities that the trading can resume, even if we are below 20 percent public float,” Leviste said.
SPNEC last week said it is looking to break ground on its 4 gigawatts ) solar power harvesting facility in Nueva Ecija within the year.
Leviste said SPNEC’s Nueva Ecija project will be the world’s largest solar power plant once completed. It will span 3,000 hectares of land where the company will put up its harvesting facility, and will take up the bulk of the proceeds of the company’s fund raising activities, including the P2 billion infusion of Metro Pacific Investments Corp.
