Vol. XXII, No. 160 [ BusinessWorld Online ]
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
THE BUDGET housing unit of listed property developer Vista Land & Lifescapes, Inc. is changing its name to Camella Homes, Inc. from C&P Homes, Inc.
Documents also showed that C&P Homes has restructured its capital to make it easy for stockholders to swap their shares for those of the Villar-led Vista Land.
C&P Homes lowered the number of its outstanding shares to 700,000 from seven billion, while the par value of each share was raised to P10,000 from P1.
Ricardo B. Santos, Jr., Vista Land vice-president for finance and chief information officer, said the restructuring was meant to give C&P Homes shareholders a chance to cash in their holdings.
In 2007, the erstwhile listed C&P Homes shareholders swapped their shares for Vista Land stocks, allowing the latter to become a listed company without conducting an initial public offering.
"[The restructuring] was undertaken to provide the remaining C&P Homes [investors], who now hold illiquid shares in an unlisted company, with a mechanism to convert their shares into cash or into Vista Land shares which trade in the Philippine Stock Exchange," he said.
The name change, meanwhile, was aimed at further promoting the Camella low-cost brand.
Vista Land has three units that cater to different market segments: Brittany Corp. for high-end clients; Crown Asia for middle-income customers; Camella Homes for the low-cost housing segment. It is also the parent of Communities Philippines, which serves as marketing arm for the three units. — Don Gil K. Carreon
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