Wilcon Depot sets offer price at P5-P5.68 range after PSE nod

Construction and home improvement materials retailer Wilcon Depot Inc. has set its initial public offering (IPO) at an indicative price range of P5 to P5.68 per share after it secured an approval from the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) to conduct its maiden listing.

Securing regulatory nod from both the PSE and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wilcon is now set to be the first company to debut in the local equities market this year.

With the said indicative price range, the company expects to raise P6.97 billion to P7.92 billion from IPO by offering 1,393,906,200 primary common shares, which will be used to finance its store network expansion in the next five years.

"We will spend majority of the proceeds for the network expansion," Wilcon Depot COO Rosemarie Ong said in an interview in Makati City.

"We plan to put up 28 more stores. Right now, we have 37 stores so we are looking at 65 stores in the next five years," she added.

Ong said for this year, the company plans to open seven of the 28 stores that will be located in areas outside Metro Manila that have high growth potential.

"Stores will be opened in Bacolod, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, Tacloban, and Silang and Gen. Trias, Cavite," she said.

The store expansion plan is intended to "solidify" Wilcon's presence outside the National Capital Region (NCR), where the company has a strong footprint.

"We have 17 stores in NCR. And the remaining 20 are distributed nationwide in Central Luzon, Calabarzon, North Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. We have two in Mindanao and two in Visayas, which are both in Cebu," Ong said.

Wilcon is scheduled to make its market debut on March 31 under the ticker symbol "WLCON," while the offer period will run from March 20 to 24. The final offer price will be announced on March 17.

The company appointed First Metro Investment Cor. as issue manager, bookrunner and as joint lead underwriter with BDO Capital &Investment Corp. RCBC Capital Corporation was hired as co-lead underwriter and Penta Capital Investment Corp. as participating underwriter for the IPO.

In the first nine months of 2016, the company’s pro-forma net sales grew 10 percent year-on-year  to P11.73 billion, while pro-forma net income surged 50 percent to P483 million. —KBK, GMA News