RWM operator ends tender offer for delisting plan

Travelers International Hotel Group Inc. (TIHGI), the owner and operator of luxury casino Resorts World Manila (RWM), on Thursday said it has concluded a more than month-long tender offer as part of the plan to voluntarily delist from the Philippine Stock Exchange by 15 October.

In a disclosure on 26 September, the Tan-led company said of the 1.58 billion common shares it made available for a tender offer priced P5.50 per share, it retrieved a total of 1.32 billion common shares as of the end of the offer period on 23 September. The offer period started on 19 August.

This will bring TIHGI’s public float, or the portion of the shares of a company held by public investors, from 10.4 percent to 2 percent. The local bourse requires listed companies to maintain a minimum public float of 10 percent.

Meanwhile, a portion of TIHGI’s existing public float totaling almost 262 million common shares were not tendered.

“The tendered shares are expected to be crossed on 30 September 2019. In view thereof, the resulting public float will be less than 2 percent after the crossing of shares,” TIHGI said.

The move will quality TIHGI for its planned delisting, which the company’s board of directors approved in a meeting on 13 August.

In a previous filing to the stock exchange, TIHGI said it wanted to “address evolving market demands and rapidly changing customer needs without compromising its business strategies to competition.”

TIHGI reported a 50 percent drop in net profits in the first half of the year, to P842.58 million from P1.69 billion in the same period last year. In the second quarter alone, net profits were down 52 percent to P599 million from P1.24 billion in the same three-month period in 2018.