Businessman Leondro Antonio Leviste has acquired an 8.5 percent stake in ABS-CBN Corp., a listed broadcast company where his mother, Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda, was a previous news anchor.
Since 2019, the year before Congress decided not to renew the company’s broadcast franchise, up to 2023, ABS-CBN posted total net loss of P33.97 billion. Those losses resulted into an earnings deficit of P2.89 billion at the end of 2023, wiping out retained earnings that until 2022 still stood at P6.86 billion despite previous years’ losses.
Leviste, a Yale University graduate whose major business interest is solar farms, bought a total 75.9 million common shares of ABS-CBN through LL Holdings Inc. and 619,000 Philippine depositary receipts issued by ABS-CBN Holdings Corp. via Countryside Investments Corp. The PDRs will be converted to common ABS-CBN shares.
Countryside Investment and its wholly-owned unit, LL Holdings, acquired the shares and PDRs in several transactions at the Philippine Stock Exchange. The share block could be enough for Leviste to get a seat in ABS-CBN’s 11-member board of directors.
Leviste founded SP New Energy Corp., the country’s largest solar energy company, is now vice chairman of the listed company after selling a 50.5 percent stake to MGen Renewable Energy Inc. of Manuel V. Pangilinan, whose group also owns media group TV 5.
Financial details of the deal were immediately disclosed but at the closing price of the common shares and PDRs of ABS-CBN, the transaction was worth a total P330.4 million.
ABS-CBN last year posted total assets of P53.1 billion and total liabilities of P43.87 billion. Return on assets last year was negative 24.2 percent.
