ROBINSONS LAND CORPORATION OFFICIAL WEBSITE

An article published in The Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 31, 2006
By Elizabeth Sanchez

Robinsons Land Corp., the property arm of the Gokongwei group, expects at least $220 million from an offer of shares to local and international investors in July, according to information given to the stock exchange.

Trailing the successful offering of its sister firm Universal Robina Corp. this year, Robinsons Land said the offer would be about 932.8 million shares, of which some 450 million would come from unissued authorized capital stock.

The price will be computed based on the average trading price in the 10 days preceding the pricing date of the offer, subject to a discount of up to 10 percent, the company said.

Robinsons Land has hired UBS Investment Bank to handle the offering.

Its shares closed Tuesday at P11.00.

Universal Robina raised P12 billion from a sale of shares to foreign and local investors. The sale increased its public float to 40 percent of authorized capital stock from 10 percent.

The same tack is being applied to Robinsons Land to make its shares more liquid.

Robinsons Land said it would launch two major residential projects in the next two years that would target the Filipino-Chinese community in Manila's Binondo Chinatown area and overseas Filipino workers.

Next year, it said, it will start construction of Otis 888, its second upscale townhouse cluster on a four-hectare property recently acquired from the government's Manila Gas company.

Otis 888 will have 200 units spread across three hectares. On the remaining one hectare, Robinsons Land said it planned to build a three- to four-story mall that would open in 2007. It said a call center would take up 10,000 square meters of mall space, with 1,500 to 2,000 seats.

>Robinsons Land said it would soon begin a residential project to cater to families of overseas Filipino workers, on a 9.3-hectare lot in the Merville area of Parañaque City. Launch is set for the third quarter of this year, it said.

The company also said it was in talks with the private owner of a lot in the Fort Bonifacio prime development area near the Makati business district on construction of a residential condominium building.