AllDay Marts Inc., a supermarket chain founded by the richest person in the Philippines, is poised to jump in its trading debut thanks to heavy retail investor interest.
AllDay’s offer was about four times oversubscribed, with the company and billionaire Manuel Villar raising a combined P4.52 billion ($89 million) by selling 7.52 billion shares at 60 centavos each. Trading is scheduled to begin Wednesday in Manila.
“The interest from retail investors is quite strong,” said Andrei Soriano, an analyst at AP Securities Inc. “We got a lot of inquiries and many of our clients subscribed to the IPO. They expect this will be another MerryMart.”
Its peer MerryMart Consumer Corp. surged by the 50% daily limit from its IPO price in each of its first three trading days in June 2020. Shares have tripled since they listed, though off their January peak.
AllDay is debuting at a time when the Philippine IPO market is booming. Six deals have raised a record $2.33 billion this year, Bloomberg-compiled data show.
Villar, whose fortune is $7.3 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is a draw for investors, say analysts, as is AllDay’s low nominal IPO price. The firm should be able to meet its target of tripling its stores in five years, they say, as Villar can provide locations through his Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc., a builder of residential, office and retail developments in 147 cities and towns nationwide.
AllDay’s IPO price of 60 centavos is “reasonable” relative to MerryMart, which priced its float at 200 times forward earnings and had just seven outlets when it went public, said AP Securities’ Soriano. AllDay, which already has 33 stores, has a multiple of 31.1 times its 2022 earnings at the offer price.
The supermarket group targets the “affluent mid-premium segment,” where its market share has widened to 9.5% in 2020 from 6.9% in 2019, according to a COL Financial Group Inc. report. It plans to use 20% of the net proceeds from the sale of new shares to expand.
AllDay will use the remaining proceeds from the new shares to pay down debt, helping save P206 million in annual financing costs, according to its prospectus.
The reopening of the Philippines’ pandemic-hit economy and increased campaign spending ahead of the May 2022 presidential and national elections are also favorable for AllDay.
“Reopening means more employment and consumer spending while the elections will help boost spending capacity of households,” said Manny Cruz, a strategist at Papa Securities. – Bloomberg
