By Ian Sayson
October 23, 2024
Metro Pacific Investments—a unit of Indonesian tycoon Anthoni Salim’s Hong Kong-based First Pacific—is exiting from the Philippines’ largest imported oil storage facility along with Singapore-based partner Keppel Infrastructure Trust.
Miami-based private equity firm I Squared Capital will buy Philippine Coastal Storage & Pipeline, an equally-owned joint venture company of Metro Pacific and Keppel Infrastructure, in a $296 million buyout, First Pacific said in a statement.
Metro Pacific, a Philippine conglomerate with insterests im toll roads, hospitals as well as water and electric utilities, will use its $148 million share of the proceeds to expand its core business and paydown debt, First Pacific said. The company, which is led by Philippine tycoon Manuel Pangilinan, Metro Pacific will book a $40 million gain once the sale is completed in early 2025.
Having acquired its stake in Philippine Coastal in 2021, Metro Pacific “considers it appropriate to divest and realize the value of the investment at this stage,” First Pacific said, adding that sale gives its unit “additional financial flexibility to reallocate and reinvest the proceeds into other parts of the business for growth or to partially prepay its bank loans.”
Aside from Metro Pacific, Salim’s First Pacific also has stakes in Philippine telecom giant PLDT and Philex Mining Corp. With a net worth of $10.3 billion, Salim and his family are the fifth richest in Indonesia, according to the ranking published by Forbes Asia in December 2023. The family also has stakes in Infofood—Indonesia’s largest noodle maker—banking, retail and coal mining.
Including debt, the Philippine Coastal buyout is worth $460 million, Keppel Infrastructure Trust said in a separate statement.
Philippine Coastal has a storage capacity of approximately six million barrels in its 150-hectare facility Subic Bay Freeport Zone, a former U.S. naval base located north of Manila. A pipeline runs throughout the facility that connects its 90 storage tanks and two piers.
I Squared Capital, an independent global infrastructure investment manager, has over $40 billion in assets under management and a portfolio of companies operating in over 71 countries.
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