Makati court allows PT&T to exit corporate rehab

A Makati court has allowed Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (PT&T) to leave a court-assisted corporate rehabilitation seven years earlier than the scheduled 2025 deadline.

PT&T’s petition to exit corporate rehabilitation is in line its bid to go for the third telco slot in the telecommunications industry.

The Regional Trial Court of Makati City, Branch 66, granted on August 6 PT&T’s request to exit from rehabilitation “subject to certain requirements in line with the approved Rehabilitation Plan,” the company said in a regulatory filing submitted on Wednesday by legal counsel Kenneth Joey Maceren.

Zamora-led PT&T asked the Makati court on July 30 for permission to leave its rehabilitation.

Under a court-approved 14-year rehabilitation plan, PT&T would settle P8.8 billion in debts by paying creditors with redeemable serial preferred shares of the company. The rehabilitation plan was approved in 2011.

“It is the conversion of debt into preferred shares,” PT&T chief operating officer Miguel Bitanga told GMA News Online.

“It is on the agenda in our upcoming annual shareholders’ meeting and we are ready to fulfill this key task,” Bitanga said.

PT&T is holding its annual stockholders’ meeting on September 14.

“The grant is an exciting milestone for PT&T as it means once we issue the preferred shares to the creditors, we will have effectively exited rehab,” Bitanga noted.

“It is a priority goal we stated in August of last year when the new management took over and a key step in our quest to unlock the true potential of PT&T as a fixed and wireless broadband player,” he said.

Leaving corporate rehabilitation will supposedly allow PT&T to further grow its operations, participate in the third telco bidding , and invest in existing fixed broadband business.
 
In August 2017, Menlo Capital Corp., jointly owned by Nickel Asia Corp. founder Salvador Zamora II and businessman Benjamin Bitanga acquired substantial interests in PT&T from Republic Telecommunications Holdings Inc.

PT&T holds a 25-year congressional franchise to establish, maintain, and operate both wired and wireless telecommunications systems for domestic and international communication in the country.

Its scalable network and infrastructure spans over 1,000 kilometers of pure fiber optic cables and meet the network demands of customers in the Greater Manila area, northern and southern Luzon, and Cebu. —VDS, GMA News