Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. (Metrobank) announced the results of its P60-billion stock rights offer after the offer period closed on April 4. The offer to eligible shareholders of 799,842,250 common shares was priced at P75.00 per share. The rights shares are expected to be listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange on April 12.
The stock rights offer was taken up entirely by the bank’s existing shareholders, with broad support seen across the shareholder base resulting in a substantial oversubscription. Metrobank believes that the success of the offer represents a strong vote of confidence from investors in the bank and its strategy.
Metrobank also believes that the robust growth of the Philippines will continue to support loan expansion across the various segments of the economy. Metrobank seeks to capitalize on the growth opportunities of large cap corporates and especially in its core franchise, the middle market and small to medium enterprises (SME) segments. Rising per-capita levels also bode well for the potential in the growing consumer space, specifically in credit cards, auto loans and home mortgage.
The capital-raising exercise is expected to enable Metrobank to pursue these business prospects to sustain the loan-growth momentum, leveraging on the bank’s sales and distribution network that has rapidly expanded in preceding years. To that end, Metrobank intends to focus on enhancing customer experience through digitization initiatives and branch efficiencies and value propositions to target clients. In addition, in order to recognize additional earnings from Metrobank Card Corp. and as part of Metrobank’s capital-planning initiatives and in line with their goal to improve operational efficiencies, a portion of the offer proceeds will be used for the acquisition of the 40 percent equity stake in MCC, the final tranche of which is set to be completed by the third quarter of 2018.
The additional capital from the stock rights offer is expected to further enhance Metrobank’s capital ratios, keeping it well above the Philippine Basel III requirements. Pro forma for the stock rights offer, Metrobank had a total capital adequacy ratio of 18.1 percent, and common equity tier 1 of 15.6 percent as of December 31, 2017, both ratios above the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas requirements, inclusive of the D-SIB buffer.
The stock rights offer was led by UBS as joint global coordinator, joint bookrunner and international underwriter and First Metro Investment Corp. as joint global coordinator, joint bookrunner, issue manager and domestic lead underwriter. DBS acted as comanager and co-underwriter.