Business World
CONSUNJI-LED DMCI Holdings, Inc. has sold its general contractor and steel fabricating firm to local and foreign investors for P1.75 billion, the company told the local bourse on Thursday.
The announcement came two years after Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Co. of Manila, Inc. (AG&P) was put on the auction block.
"AG&P, a 98%-owned construction-related business venture of DMCI Holdings, was sold to a consortium of local and foreign private investors," the company said in a disclosure.
"Among the investors are the Kuwaiti fund company KCIC and several key personalities with a wealth of experience in the oil and gas industry and international finance," it added.
KCIC is a five-year-old Kuwait-based investment company regulated by the Central Bank of Kuwait. The Kuwait Stock Exchange-listed firm is partly owned by the Kuwait Investment Authority, Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund.
"[O]ur new ownership structure … will allow us to further strengthen our already strong infrastructure and management team," AG&P Chief Executive Angelito D. Bermudo said in the same statement.
"We have planned for an aggressive investment schedule that will see us with state-of-the-art equipment and capabilities," he added.
The conglomerate’s construction group -- which is composed of D.M. Consunji, Inc. and AG&P -- were the top earners of DMCI Holdings in January to September. Net income contribution surged by 139% to P1.41 billion from a year ago.
AG&P was formed in 1900 during the American occupation under West Virginia laws. It became a Philippine corporation in 1958.
New projects of AG&P include the BP Whiting-Coker project in Indiana in the United States, which boosted revenues for the year. It is also into overseas manpower services.
Early in 2008, DMCI Holdings announced a plan to sell the company, but this was hampered by the global financial crisis.
The Consunji-led conglomerate is also into real estate (DMCI Homes, Inc.), mining (Semirara Mining Corp.) and water distribution (Maynilad Water Services, Inc.).
Shares in DMCI Holdings, whose profits surged by 79% to P5.8 billion in the nine-month period that ended September, rallied by 3.6% or P1.25 to P36.00 apiece on Thursday. -- Neil Jerome C. Morales
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