MANILA, Philippines — Affiliates of the JG Summit Holdings, Inc. Group, including listed subsidiary Universal Robina Corporation, sold P5.38 billion worth of JG Summit shares via an accelerated overnight equity placement.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, JG Summit said the affiliates sold 215 million of its shares at a price of P25.00 per share. UBS AG acted as Sole Bookrunner for the transaction.

“The initial offer size of the transaction was US$75 million and was upsized to US$125 million due to strong global investor demand amounting to nearly 3x the base deal size,” JG Summit said.

It added that “the transaction was done in order to widen the shareholder base of the Company, and as a response to strong demand for the Company's stock.”

In a separate disclosure, URC said it has agreed to sell 57.66 million JG Summit common shares worth a total of P1.47 billion. The other members of the group that sold JG Summit shares were not identified.

The selling price of P25 per share was lower than the P28.50 closing price of JG Summit shares last February 2. On February 3, the price of JG Summit shares at the PSE slipped to as low as P25.05.

JG Summit reported a 40 percent drop in its net income for the nine months of 2011 to P7.82 billion from the P13.03 billion earned in the same period of 2010 due to the reduction of its stake in its airline business.

The firm said its take in the profits of its airline business is reduced to 67 percent following Cebu Pacific’s initial public offering in October 2010, where the Group sold 33 percent of its ownership in Cebu Pacific.

The Group also recorded a lower foreign exchange gain during the period and recognized market valuation losses from its financial assets as the capital markets have seen volatility during the period.

Consolidated revenues were up 16.5 percent from P90.40 billion to P105.31 billion due to the strong performance of all business units.

Only equity in net earnings of associates showed a decline by 31.0 percent to P1.74 billion from P2.52 billion. The drop is mainly due to lower income recorded by its property investment in Singapore. (James A. Loyola)