Merkado Barkada
October 27, 2025 | 9:28am
Coal Asia [COAL 0.02 unch; 27% avgVol] [link] said it has no plans to delist from the Philippine Stock Exchange despite launching a P99.7-million tender offer to buy out the remaining shares held by minority investors. In a disclosure on 22 October 2025, COAL said that “current shareholders will sell the shares necessary to comply with the MPO (minimum public ownership)” should the transaction result in a breach of the threshold. Last September, COAL announced that a group of major shareholders—Dexter Tiu, Eric Peter Roxas, Gertim Chuahiong, Alexander Tiu, and John Capinpin—had entered into a share purchase agreement with Pure Energy Holdings Corp., its subsidiary Pure Water Corp., and Quadwater Corp. for the sale of 28.67 billion common shares, representing 71.68% of the company’s outstanding capital. The transaction triggered a mandatory tender offer to buy out the remaining 11.33 billion public shares at P0.0088 apiece—more than 60% below market price. Market observers have said Pure Energy, which shares several directors with COAL, may be positioning for a backdoor listing.
MB BOTTOM-LINE: Sorry for the capslock screaming in the headline, just thought it would be fun to give you a taste of how COAL decided to deliver the entirety of its response to the exchange. That’s funny. I’m interested to see where this process goes, but like the ABG backdoor play (where ABG requested a self-imposed suspension), the main issue here is the lack of clarity for investors and speculators. We know who will be buying the shares through the tender offer, but we don’t know who will exercise control. I mean, we have an idea, but we don’t know. We know the companies that could use this translation as a backdoor play for listing on the PSE, but we don’t know which (if any) of Pure Energy or Pure Water or Quatwater will own a majority of COAL’s shares post-backdoor, should that backdoor happen. Beyond that, even if we did know, we don’t have any idea about the potential owner/s’ intentions. The tender offer was at a massive discount to market, and the best clue we have as to what this is that COAL code-named this valuation exercise “Project Neptune”. Of course, Neptune is the Roman god of freshwater and the sea, so that makes me think of water. Perhaps this is a bulk water play. But Neptune was also the Roman god of horses. Oh, but the file was also confusingly titled “Project Poseidon”, who was the Greek god of the sea! What does this mean? Was Project Poseidon an earlier name that was scrapped because it doesn’t reflect the freshwater narrative? Hard to say. Poseidon was also a god of horses, so maybe we’re being hit with a double-barrel of misdirection to take our eyes off the real play, which is some massive consolidation of, like, horses. It’s at this point in my morning that I realized I have had too much coffee and not enough food.
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