Billionaire Manuel V. Pangilinan gained a stronger hold in SP New Energy Corp. (SPNEC) as businessman and newbie lawmaker Leandro Leviste completed his sale of shares worth about P13.76 billion.
The block sales, completed on Monday, allowed MGen Renewable Energy Inc. (MGreen) to secure 10.83 billion of new common shares from Leviste’s Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings, Inc. This followed the maturity of their loan deals.
MGreen is the renewable arm of Meralco Power Gen Corp., the power generation business of Manila Electric Co.
The exchangeable note facility agreements were pursued in September 2024 and March of this year. The first portion involved 5.82 billion shares priced at P1.29 per share. The second wave, meanwhile, covered 5 billion shares at P1.25 each.
In a disclosure on Wednesday, SPNEC said MGreen’s stockholding rose to 28.7 billion common shares from 17.87 billion. It also has 19.4 billion preferred ‘B’ shares.
Solar Philippines’ remaining shares, on the other hand, were reduced from 18.99 billion to 8.16 billion common shares.
Following this development, MGen’s stake in SPNEC now stands at 69.25 percent.
Leviste’s move
Just last week, Leviste consolidated his shares via a P6.32-billion share transfer from his company, SolarPhilippines.
This came just four months after the young businessman had decided to unload his interests in SPNEC and affiliates after winning the position as Batangas 1st district representative.
SPNEC is set to make a mark not just in the Philippine renewable market as its P200-billion Luzon solar farm is expected to become the largest facility of its kind in the world.
MTerra Solar is designed to have a capacity of 3,500 megawatts (MW), with a battery energy storage system with 4,000 MW hours.
The group targets to make the power plant fully operational by 2027, powering over 2.4 million households.
Fresh contracts were awarded last week for the south block of the project, consisting of 1,050 MWp of solar generation capacity and 1.2 gigawatt hours of battery energy storage system.