Resorts World operator halves IPO price

MANILA - The operator of Resorts World Manila slashed by half the price at which it would sell its shares to the public, trimming the size of the equity fundraising to $430 million.

During Friday's domestic roadshow, UBS Philippines managing director Lauro Baja III said the maximum price for Travellers International Hotel Group Inc’s initial public offering (IPO) will be P11.88 per share, down from the original price of P23.38 per share.




UBS is one of the global coordinators, international book runners and lead managers of the IPO.

Proceeds from the primary offering will drop to $430 million, Baja said. Including the over-allotment option, the proceeds could reach $450 million.

The joint venture between Alliance Global Group Inc of Philippine billionaire Andrew Tan and Malaysia's Genting Hong Kong earlier planned to raise $842-million from the IPO before it was shelved in July in light of the volatility in financial markets worldwide.

Travellers will kick off its international roadshow on Monday, bringing the hotel and gaming firm to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, New York and Boston.

The final offer price will be set on October 17 with offer period scheduled from October 22 to 29. Listing of the shares at the Philippine Stock Exchange is slated on November 5.

Travellers will use the proceeds from the offer to partly finance the $600-million expansion of Resorts World Manila, the country's first integrated tourism estate.

CIMB Securities (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Maybank Kim Eng Securities (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Merrill Lynch (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Religare Capital Markets Hong Kong Limited and UBS AG, Hong Kong Branch were tapped as joint global coordinators, international book runners and lead managers.

CLSA Limited, Credit Suisse (Singapore) Limited and Morgan Stanley & Company International PLC will act as joint international co-book runners.

Domestic lead underwriters are BDO Capital & Investment Corporation, Maybank ATR Kim Eng Capital Partners Inc and UBS Investments Philippines Inc.

Travellers operates Resorts World Manila and plans to build a second facility in the Entertainment City of state-owned Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor).

The expansion of Resorts World Manila will double its current offerings in the next three years. This involves a convention cenetr that can accommodate 5,000 people, an additional 1,100 hotel rooms and gaming facilities.

source: interaksyon.com

San Miguel-Citra consortium plans fund-raising for Philippine, Indonesia tollway projects

MANILA - The joint venture of San Miguel Corp (SMC) and the Citra Group plans to raise more money to finance a multibillion-dollar war chest for building new tollway projects in the Philippines and Indonesia.

In a briefing on Friday, Shadik Wahono, chairman of PT Citra Marga Nuphasala, told reporters that the consortium is considering an initial public offering (IPO) in the Philippines or a business trust listing in Singapore next year.

The SMC-Padma Funds LP consortium holds majority of shares in Citra Metro Manila Tollways Corp, South Luzon Tollway Corp and their respective operating and maintenance companies. 

Padma, which is managed by Cayman Island-based Parralax Capital Management, owns the Citra Group. Citra Manila is the concession holder and operator of the Skyway, while SLTC operates the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX).

Wahono said the company plans to raise $700 million-$1 billion to finance existing tollway projects and future acquisitions in the Philippines and Indonesia.

"The IPO plan is still in various stages. We are talking with some bankers," Wahono said, adding that it will undertake a road show in Hong Kong and Singapore to get more feedback from investors.

Wahono said the consortium may create a new corporate vehicle for the planned IPO in the Philippines or business trust listing in Singapore.

The company also has the option to list Atlantic Aurum Inc in the local bourse.  San Miguel Holdings Corp (SMHC) owns 46 percent of Atlantic, while Citra Group, the balance.

SMC-Padma's priority projects include the $950 million Skyway Stage 3, $670 million Skyway Stage 4, $230 million SLEX TR4 (from Sto. Tomas to Lucena), and $50 million extension and widening of the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR).

SMC, through its subsidiaries, is involved in the $250 million North Luzon East Expressway and the $390 million Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway projects.

In Indonesia, the priorities are the Becaluya Road Project, the Inner Jakarta Toll Road Project and the South Sumatra Resources Road Project.

The SMC-Padma consortium also is in late stage discussions to acquire control of Star Infrastructure Development Corp, the concession holder of the 42-kilometer STAR in Batangas.

In 2011, combined revenue from these toll roads reached $237 million. Revenue for next year is expected to reach $266 million, or an increase of 12 percent.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook goes down temporarily

Facebook’s website suffered sporadic outages on Thursday, anywhere from half an hour to two hours according to various blogs, tweets and affected users, but the company said the problem has been fixed.

“Earlier today, some users briefly experienced issues loading the site. The issues have since been resolved and everyone should now have access to Facebook,” company spokesman Michael Kirkland told Reuters.

The outages came as Facebook continued to grapple with the fallout of its botched May 18 IPO. The stock has plummeted nearly 23 percent from its IPO price, and numerous lawsuits have been filed in the wake of first-day trading glitches.

Shares of Facebook closed up 5 percent at $29.60 Thursday on the Nasdaq.

source: interaksyon.com

Investors brace for Facebook debut on Wall Street

Investors are bracing for Facebook's Wall Street debut on Friday after the world's No.1 online social network raised about $16 billion in one of the biggest initial public offerings in US history.

Valued at $104 billion, Facebook is larger than Starbucks Corp. and Hewlett-Packard combined, sparking intense speculation on how much higher its valuation will rise once shares start trading.

"A 15 to 20 percent pop is in the realm of possibility," said Tim Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame. "Given they already moved their IPO range up and increased the size, that's bullish to begin with."

Facebook priced its offering at $38 a share on Thursday, but the price could be higher when shares begin trading under the FB symbol on the Nasdaq at around 11 a.m. Eastern Time.

Some expect shares could rise 30 percent or more on Friday, despite ongoing concerns about Facebook's long-term moneymaking potential. An average of Morningstar analyst estimates puts the closing price for Facebook shares at $50 on its first trading day.

The IPO, expected to mint more than a thousand paper millionaires at the company, has received wall-to-wall media coverage and sparked hopes of a boom in sales of everything from San Francisco Bay Area real estate to automobiles.

Facebook employees marked the event with an all-night "hackathon" at the company's Menlo Park, California headquarters starting on Thursday evening, a tradition in which programmers work on side projects that sometimes turn into mainstream offerings.

Facebook's 28-year-old founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was expected to ring a bell at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters on Friday morning to kick off trading on the Nasdaq.

Founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook has grown into the world's dominant social network with 900 million users.

At $38 a share, Facebook would trade at over 100 times historical earnings versus Apple Inc.'s 14 times and Google Inc.'s 19 times.

For all the high expectations surrounding Facebook, the company faces challenges maintaining its growth momentum.

Some investors worry the company has not yet figured out a way to make money from the growing number of users who access Facebook on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Meanwhile, revenue growth from Facebook's online advertising business, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue, has slowed in recent months.

"With mobile usage growth exceeding desktop, monetization in the near term could be reduced given little-to-no ad coverage on mobile, challenged by limited screen sizes," said a report last week from Susquehanna Financial Group.

GM said on Tuesday it would stop placing ads on Facebook, raising questions about whether display ads on the site are as effective as traditional media. —Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Facebook sets $28 to $35 IPO price range

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's the day techies and investors have been waiting for: Facebook set a price range of $28 to $35 per share for its initial public offering. It also upped the maximum size of its offering to $13.6 billion, up from its previous $5 billion estimate.

Facebook currently has around 2.1 billion shares outstanding, so if its IPO prices at the top of the range, the company would be valued at just shy of $75 billion.

Many Facebook employees and executives, including Zuckerberg, hold unexercised stock options. The company itself is also holding some shares for future employee equity grants. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook's outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion, pushing its valuation closer to $98 billion.

Facebook's target price range isn't binding, and could change several times before Facebook actually makes its debut. The company will set its final price the night before it begins trading. That's expected to happen sometime in mid-May, with May 18 the current target date.

Institutional investors who purchase shares directly from Facebook's underwriters, including lead banker Morgan Stanley, will buy in at the IPO price. Regular investors will get their shot the next day, when Facebook begins trading on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange under the ticker "FB."

The target range set on Thursday could be lowballing. Facebook said in a filing last month that it internally valued its shares at $30.89 each, as of January 31 -- up from $29.73 a month earlier.

Facebook's user base is growing. The site had 901 million monthly active users as of March 31, up 33% compared to the same date last year. User growth is fastest in Brazil, India, and the United States, Facebook said.

Zuck's windfall: Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. If Facebook prices at the top of its range, that will net Zuckerberg about $1 billion -- cue the Sean Parker "you know what's cool?" jokes.

But Zuckerberg won't be hanging on to his cash. The company said he will use the "substantial majority" of the windfall to cover the whopping tax bill he'll be hit with, thanks to his plan to exercise a large stock-options grant that will substantially increase his ownership stake in the company he founded.

In 2011, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg pulled in a $500,000 base salary. But he requested -- and will receive -- only $1 per year in salary starting January 1, 2013.

Zuckerberg, who remains the largest shareholder in the company he created, still takes home a hefty pay package. His total compensation in 2011 came to $1.48 million, according to Facebook's calculations.

Although he only owns around a quarter of Facebook, Zuckerberg's shares carry extra voting rights. After the IPO, Zuckerberg will control around 57.3% of the voting power in Facebook.

source: http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/03/technology/facebook-ipo-price/index.htm?hpt=hp_t3

Facebook to buy Instagram for $1 billion

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook will pay $1 billion in cash and stock for photo-sharing application Instagram, making its largest-ever acquisition in the months before a mega-IPO.

The deal is expected to close later this quarter. The popular Instagram application, which allows users to add filters and effects to pictures taken on their smartphones, has gained about 30 million users since it first launched in January 2011.

The acquisition comes as a surprise as the world’s largest social network nears an initial public offering. Facebook will acquire Instagram’s entire team as part of the deal.

“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post. “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.”

source: interaksyon.com

Report: Facebook may file for IPO next week

The social-networking behemoth is planning as early as next week to file for an initial public offering worth up to $100 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources.

Morgan Stanley is expected to be lead underwriter with Goldman Sachs also likely to play a major role, the sources said. USA TODAY could not independently corroborate the story. The timing of such a filing could put Facebook on track to start trading stock as early as this spring.

The six-year-old Facebook is expected to raise $10 billion, with a valuation of between $75 billion and $100 billion, although such information would not be in the initial registration document. By either measure, it would make Facebook among the largest IPOs ever. (Visa set a record in 2008, when it raised $17.9 billion.)

"It makes Facebook the largest Internet IPO ever," says Kathleen Smith, a principal at IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital.

Facebook declined to comment. "We're not going to participate in IPO-related speculation," Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said Friday.

Article Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-27/facebook-ipo-could-come-next-week/52823968/1