Singapore’s Proa Partners acquires 5% of PhilWeb

MANILA, Philippines - A Singapore-based investment advisory firm has accumulated five percent of listed PhilWeb Corp.

In a regulatory filing, PhilWeb Corp. said Proa Partners Pte. Ltd. now owns 76.26 million shares or 5.31 percent of the issued stocks of the company.

“Clients of Proa Partners have a long-term investment interest in PhilWeb,” the listed firm said.

Proa Partners started accumulating PhilWeb shares late in February, allowing the Singapore-based firm to acquire 5.31 percent of PhilWeb as of last week. Its single largest transaction was the purchase of 407,400 PhilWeb shares worth P5.88 million.

But given different voting policies of its underlying clients, Proa Partners has a voting control of only 4.69 percent, PhilWeb said.

Proa Partners manages 16 accounts with an estimated $526 million worth of assets. Most of its clients are charitable institutions.

It offers portfolio management for businesses or institutional clients and management services for security portfolios.

PhilWeb, for its part, earned more investor interest as its earnings breached the P1 billion level last year on the back of better operations in Southeast Asia.

Net income surged 20 percent to P1.1 billion last year as revenues jumped 27 percent to P1.5 billion from a year ago.

The fastest growth came from PhilWeb’s Asia Pacific unit that operates a scratch card businesses in Cambodia and Timor Leste, and a Sweeps Center in Guam.

In the Philippines, PhilWeb’s e-Games cafe business hit 277 outlets last year.

PhilWeb is controlled by former trade minister Roberto B. Ongpin. Its products include the text raffle Premyo Sa Resibo and Home Play, the only peso-based online casino of PAGCOR.

PhilWeb is the first and largest Internet gaming company in the country with a total market capitalization of P20 billion. It currently serves over 40,000 customers a day via its network of online cafés, sports betting kiosks and mobile games nationwide.