Premiere Horizon Alliance [PHA 0.4 7.3%] [link] disclosed yesterday that it had received notice that the Office of the City Prosecutor of Pasig City had found probable cause to indict Marvin Dela Cruz and Augusto Antonio C. Serafica, Jr. in the criminal case of estafa filed by PHA against Mr. Dela Cruz and Mr. Serafica.
PHA filed the criminal complaint in December, alleging that Mr. Dela Cruz and Mr. Serafica misappropriated P32 million in corporate funds.
Mr. Serafica was a director of PHA until he resigned on January 16 (though the PHA website still lists him as a director). He was one of four former PHA directors that have resigned so far in January, citing “personal reasons”.
Mr. Dela Cruz is the owner of Squidpay, a fintech payments app of unknown viability, and is only a significant minority shareholder of PHA (~24%) after he failed to make a scheduled payment for the remainder of his shares to complete the assembly of a majority stake.
He is also being sued by Brandon Leong for failure to make payments on a loan that appears to have financed his initial purchase of PHA shares. By way of Twitter, Mr. Dela Cruz responded to the disclosure by tweeting that he and “Tito Serafica” were not afforded due process, that the accusations are “baseless”, and that “[j]ustice will prevail”.
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I’m not sure if this is the best story or the dumbest story in the PSE Universe, but apparently some people have found this drama compelling enough to drive PHA’s price up 36% in the past week.
Sure, the stock sank 7% yesterday, but it’s still up over 26% from what I’d call its “non-basura pump” baseline of around P0.30/share. For years, this stock has been a speculative playground for traders.
In early 2019, the massive 390% pump was on news that PHA had a funding facility with a foreign investor in place that could be converted to a controlling stake, and that it was planning to spin-off a subsidiary.
Neither happened, and the stock sank back down to its baseline over the course of the year.
Then, in early 2021, the stock surged 700% on news that Marvin Dela Cruz and his homies would take over PHA and (maybe) inject the mysterious SquidPay assets.
At the time, I wrote that I disliked drawn-out nature of the deal (took 2 years to complete), and the uncertainty that it created, as it allowed Mr. Dela Cruz to pay for his stake in cash or in SquidPay shares.
The backdoor of SquidPay wasn’t certain or even required. Who knows where this crazy story is going next.
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