EEI eyes P990M from rights offer

Construction giant EEI Corp. is eyeing to raise P990 million from the stock rights offering of its shares at P4.50 each, the company informed the Philippine Stock Exchange.

EEI stocks closed at P4.70 Friday from the previous day’s close of P4.75.

The company will offer up to 220 million shares to raise funds for its working capital requirements and pay off some bank obligations.

About P318 million of the sales proceeds will be used to settle outstanding bank loans ‑ Bank of the Philippine Islands (P175 million) and Malayan Colleges Inc. (P143 million).

Another P164 million will be used to fund ongoing projects such as the Rio-Tuba 2 with JGC Corp., the Petro-FCC facility of Petron with Daelim Philippines, and the Shang Grand Tower with Kuok Properties.

EEI intends to fully repay all outstanding obligations plus accrued interest within 30 days after the listing of the shares, which has been set on April 2007.

As of end-September 2006, EEI had a total short-term debt of P1.815 billion and P119 million in long-term debt.

Based on its unaudited financial statements as of Sept. 30, 2006, EEI’s net tangible book value was at P1.42 billion or P1.55 per share.

The unaudited net tangible book value represents the amount of the company’s total assets less its total liabilities.

RCBC Capital Corp., a 99.91 percent owned subsidiary of the Yuchengco family’s Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., is the lead underwriter for the issue.

The Yuchengco family, through the YGC Group of Companies, is the majority shareholder of EEI.

As of end-September 2006, EEI had outstanding domestic projects worth P4.38 billion and another P7.22 billion in the pipeline in new contracts in Saudi Arabia.

Among the company’s major ongoing projects include The Residences at Greenbelt and One Serendra of Ayala Land Inc., Philtown’s Fairways Tower and Kuok Properties’ Shang Grand Tower.

EEI is also building various key infrastructure projects such as the Iloilo airport, the Subic-Clark Expressway, the elevated access road to NAIA-3 Terminal and several expansion packages for three stations of LRT-1.