The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) is looking at a possible penalty after DITO CME Holdings Corp. suspended its P8-billion stock rights offer.
The third telco opted to defer the issuance of the rights shares citing that “current market conditions are less than ideal to pursue the offering.”
The stock rights offer, already extended by a week from its original offer schedule of Dec. 27, 2021 to Jan. 18, 2022 to January 25, was supposed to finance the company’s commercial rollout of its business under unit DITO Telecommunity Corp.
DITO said it will facilitate the refund of all subscription payments made by shareholders and qualified institutional buyers during the offer period.
In announcing DITO’s decision, the PSE said this is “without prejudice to any regulatory action” that it may pursue “ to ensure full compliance with the applicable rules and the protection of the investing public consistent with the mandate of the Exchange as a self-regulatory organization, to maintain a fair and orderly market.”
“The company, its underwriter and other advisers are responsible for strict compliance with the rules of the Exchange,” it added.
Ramon Monzon, PSE president, over the weekend said should the share sale fail to attract enough interest from investors, its underwriter has a firm commitment to take up the shares.
At the same time, Monzon noted there are also investors who accumulated DITO shares prior to the stock rights offer who are expecting to buy more shares at a discount.
In December, DITO priced its stock rights offer at P4.88 per rights share, based on a 17.5 percent discount to the company’s 30-day volume-weighted average price.
