Petron Corp., the country’s largest oil refiner with operations in Malaysia, said Friday its board has approved the dividend rates on Series 4 preferred shares it plans to offer starting next week to raise as much as P17 billion.
Net proceeds of the preferred shares issuance will be used to redeem Petron’s series 3A preferred shares, refinancing maturing debts, and fund other expenditures, including acquiring crude oil inventory. Petron has a total P13.4 billion of Series 3A preferred shares are outstanding.
Series 4D and 3D will be taken from 50 million preferred shares that were shelf registered by Petron with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year.
The oil company will offer 13 million shares at P1,000 each for a total P13 billion but has earmarked 4 million preferred shares to cover possible oversubscription that would raise another P4 billion.
The dividend rate for Series 4D preferred shares was set at 6.8364 percent while that for Series 4E was set at 7.1032 percent.
The preferred shares will be offered from September 5 through 13 and will be listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange on September 23.
Petron earlier reported that first half revenue increased 21 percent to P444.5 billion, with consolidated volume of oil sold in the Philippines and Malaysia up 20 percent to 69.1 million barrels.
Operating income in the first half was 8 percent higher at P17.3 billion but net profit was off slightly to P6 billion from P6.14 billion in the year-earlier period.
