Villar eyes 4 more IPO in 3 years

Manuel “Manny” Villar Jr. is beefing up three to four of its retail concepts under holding firm AllValue Holdings Corp. for possible initial public offerings (IPO) in the next three years following the success of home improvement retailer AllHome Corp.’s maiden offering.

The billionaire businessman said this after AllHome’s stock market debut on Thursday. The company raised P14.9 billion from selling 1,125,000,000 shares and an overallotment option of 168,750,000 shares, making it the largest IPO to date this year in terms of value.

This helped the main index rally by more than 1 percent, breaching the 7,700 territory.

Aside from AllHome, other brands under the AllValue include the AllDay supermarket, AllDay convenience store and the Coffee Project.

“We have other companies that are actually ready, but we’re still studying the environment if it’s okay to list. This one (AllHome) is ripe already. Others are not that ripe; we just have to continue scaling them up. There will be about three or four possible candidates. I can talk about three years (timeline),” Villar told reporters at the sidelines of the AllHome listing at the Philippine Stock Exchange Tower in Taguig on Thursday.

Villar projects “better” business environment moving forward after domestic headline inflation has cooled down from last year’s high. “We can expect the (interest) rates to go down, we can expect the reserve requirement to be reduced, so that’s good for business. To me, we had some hiccups last year, but I think going forward, it’s good.”

He’s also banking on the improved business environment to further propel AllHome’s profitability. The company, started in 2013, has registered compound annual growth rate of 45 percent and 231 percent in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Villar said he expects the trend “continuing for 2019 and next year.”

Shares of AllHome debuted at P11.62 apiece yesterday, higher from its IPO price of P11.50. It ended Thursday up 0.5 percent at P11.56 apiece after swinging to a high of P11.62 and low of P11.42 during the session. Notably, the Philippine Stock Exchange index also fared well, gaining 83.78 points to end 1.09 percent higher at 7,765.03 due to optimism in the United States-China trade war.

“Shares of HOME got off relatively warm welcome from the market as shares closed up 0.5 percent to mark its entry into the Philippine market. Shares were trading relatively sideways for most of the session, however investors bought up in the afternoon when the company disclosed future plans,” head of sales for Regina Capital Development Corp. Luis Limlingan said.

AllHome is allotting P3.6 billion for its capital expenditures budget for 2019 and 2020, with the goal of doubling its market share to 14 percent from the current 7.1 percent after it has jacked up nationwide footprint to 70 stores. Currently, it has 27 stores in 22 cities in the country.

AllHome vice chairman Camille Villar said the company plans to add 25 stores next year, 10 of which will be funded by the proceeds generated from the IPO. About 60 percent of the stores to be built in two-year expansion will be located in Mega Manila.