THE PDS Group will be re-evaluating its listing target for 2019, possibly adjusting upwards the previously set P200 billion, a company official said.
“We base our target to some projections, because for [2018] we projected mga P189 [billion] for new listing. So the target was really for [2019] was set when we did our planning was P200 [billion],” said Ma. Theresa B. Ravalo, officer-in-charge of the PDS Group, the bond exchange’s infrastructure provider.
This comes after the Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp. (PDEx) ended 2018 with a total of P256.39 billion in new listings, representing a 24% increase from the figure in 2017.
Ms. Ravalo said the total outstanding amount of bonds listed or enrolled in PDEx was expected to hit P1.045 trillion in 2018, 32% higher than the previous year’s figure.
“We have to re-evaluate it in the current condition primarily because of the presence of the bank bonds, so that’s the new ones that were recently approved by the BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas),” she said, noting this drove up the total value of bonds.
Ms. Ravalo said between November and December around P65 billion was raised.
“We have to sit down, usually we do our re-evaluation mid-year because once we’ve set it that’s already been approved,” she said. “We hope it should be higher sana [than the original P200 billion target].”
“We’re also looking at bringing to the market additional instruments such as there’s perpetuals — perpetual bonds. That could be another source of funding, additional instrument that they could use for funding their requirements,” Ms. Ravalo said.
Factors that would be considered during the re-evaluation of targets would be the funding requirement of companies.
“One is the funding requirement of the industry, and another would be introduce new instruments because there might be some issuer who would like to access the market but the instrument that is available may not be catering to their funding requirement,” Ms. Ravalo said.
She cited for instance, the commercial papers issued by Phoenix Petroleum Philippines, Inc.
“This caters to a very specific need of the issuer because it’s shorter so if we don’t have this before in 2015 that increase will not be there because there is no instrument. So if it’s just the usual vanilla bond, the long-term bond, that would be too expensive for them [because] they want short-term,” Ms. Ravalo said.
Last week, Phoenix Petroleum listed its new commercial papers with an initial tranche of P7 billion of the P10 billion approved for its fund-raising program.
It was the second commercial paper-related listed for 2018, which happens to the 29th and last listing for the year. — Victor V. Saulon
