US fund management firm reinvests in AgriNurture

MANILA, Philippines — AgriNurture Inc., the listed firm chaired by businessman Antonio Tiu, is getting a boost from a returning investor.

Black River, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Black River Capital Partners Fund (Food) LP, has acquired a stake in ANI by buying the shares from Vikings Asia Agri Ventures BV (formerly known as Solveigh Philippines Agri Investments BV.).

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday, ANI said Vikings Asia Agri Ventures sold 50 million shares of ANI through a block sale at a price of P13.642 per share for a total of P682.1 million.

Tiu identified the buyer of the sold shares as Black River Food Fund.

“It’s a boost of confidence,” he said when asked for comment.

Black River is a US-based asset management company.

In 2013, it was already an investor in ANI with an investment of as much as 30.92 percent in the food-focused fund.

Black River used to be owned by Cargill, the world’s largest agriculture company.

Prior to this, in 2011, Black River bought a 28.11-percent stake in ANI.

ANI is an exporter of agriculture products and hopes to ride on the steadily growing economy.

In the first half, the company reported a 50 percent jump in net income to P70.72 million.

Consolidated sale of goods and services, meanwhile, rose to P2.4 billion, almost three times the P846.31 million registered in the same period last year.

Of the different businesses, the Philippine operations contributed 47 percent, while sales from foreign operations accounted for 53 percent of consolidated sales.

Among the different businesses, local distribution sales grew 29.45 percent to P62.15 million, mainly due to improvement in operations.

The group’s export sales, meanwhile, soared to P1.01 billion.

Moving forward, ANI expects to continue increasing the sales volume of many of its agricultural products such as banana along with the growing demand from different markets around the world.