Philippines: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the US$857m initial public offering of Cemex Holdings Philippines. Documents filed with the SEC showed that Cemex Holdings planned to sell 2.032 billion common shares at an offer price of up to US$0.37/share to raise US$746m in proceeds. Another 304.94 million shares were allotted in case of oversubscription, which could increase total proceeds to US$857m, making it among the largest IPOs in the country, according to the Manila Standard newspaper.

Documents show that Cemex Holdings aimed to use the proceeds to repay up to US$504m worth of short-term loans from related third party New Sunward Holdings, which was used to acquire operating subsidiaries Apo Cement Corp and Solid Cement Corp. Cemex Holdings said it planned to spend US$52m for 2016 capital expenditures, including US$13m for maintenance of existing cement facilities.

Cemex Holdings is a newly formed subsidiary of Cemex Asian South East Corp., which is wholly-owned by Cemex España, which in turn is indirectly owned by Cemex. Cemex Holdings operates two cement plants in the Philippines with a cement production capacity of 5.7Mt/yr.