TOKYO-LISTED Universal Entertainment Corp., the parent company of both Tiger Resort Asia Ltd. (TRA) and Tiger Resort, Leisure and Entertainment Inc. (TRLEI), announced over the weekend that it was no longer eyeing a backdoor listing for TRLEI, operator of the integrated resort Okada Manila.
TRA last week sold its entire 66.67-percent stake in Asiabest Group International Inc. (ABG), an existing Philippine-listed company, to a consortium led by PremiumLands Corp. (PLC) for an undisclosed amount.
TRA had acquired 200 million shares of ABG in February 2019 with plans to use it as a vehicle for the backdoor listing of Okada Manila.
In a disclosure filed by Universal last Friday, it said that “the purpose of the acquisition of ABG was to list another sub-subsidiary of the company, Tiger Resort, Leisure and Entertainment Inc., on [the] Philippine Stock Exchange.”
“Considering that the financial performance of Okada Manila, the integrated resort operated by TRLEI, has been growing steadily and performing well in the past years, TRA [has] judged that the necessity of AsiaBest for TRLEI to be listed no longer exists,” Universal said.
Okada Manila was reported earlier this year to be considering an initial public offering (IPO) in 2025 instead of a backdoor listing, with the IPO estimated to be in the range of $500 million to $750 million.
PSE President and CEO Ramon Monzon confirmed in a Bloomberg interview last month that Okada’s legal advisor had informed the bourse that they had decided to defer the planned IPO.
The deal, Universal said, will have no impact on consolidated financial results for the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2024, as the execution date would be in the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2025.
Universal said the transfer of shares could be done by end-February next year.
While ABG did not disclose the transaction price for the sale of TRA’s 200 million shares in the company to PLC, Universal said the transaction was valued at P510.4 million (about $8.8 million or 1.32 billion yen).
This is equivalent to P2.55 per share, way below ABG’s last traded share price of P26.20 each on Thursday last week. The PSE on Friday halted trading in ABG shares pending regulatory evaluation of the transaction.
ABG has been the PSE’s best performer for the year, with its share price rising by a staggering 900 percent prior to the trading halt.
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