GGRAsia – Philippine gaming firm LRWC nods preferred dividend

Philippine gaming firm LRWC nods preferred dividend

Dec 13, 2017 Newsdesk Latest News, Philippines, Top of the deck

Philippines-based Leisure and Resorts World Corp (LRWC) – which has several interests in the land-based and online gambling sectors – approved on Tuesday a regular cash dividend of PHP0.0425 (US$0.000842) per share to preferred shareholders.

The dividend is due to be paid on January 19 next year, to those recorded as preferred stockholders as of December 26.

The firm said in a Wednesday filing to the Philippine Stock Exchange that the dividend referred to unappropriated retained earnings as of November 30. The filing indicated the firm had a total of 1.65 billion preferred shares as a component of its common stock outstanding, which would indicate its dividend cash commitment as PHP70.13 million.

In other developments, the group confirmed in a Tuesday filing that it was in talks with a unit of Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd regarding a possible casino development on the Philippine holiday island of Boracay.

“We would like to clarify that AB Leisure Global Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, is currently in discussion with Radiant Charm Investments Ltd, a member of the Galaxy Entertainment Group, to develop a resort with casino in Boracay,” stated Leisure and Resorts World Corp, by way of clarification of some media reports.

In the third quarter to September 30, Leisure and Resorts World Corp reported plummeting net income judged year-on-year. Such income was just under PHP1.07 million, compared to nearly PHP288.64 million in the prior-year reporting period, a 99.6 percent decrease.

The group had said in its November 10 filing that the reason for decline in its third-quarter consolidated net income – a slightly different measurement – was “mainly due to significant decreases in net income” of its 70-percent owned unit First Cagayan Leisure and Resorts Corp, the master licensor for online gaming in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone, an economic development area in the northeast of the country’s main island; a decline for the group’s 100-percent owned unit AB Leisure Exponent Inc in “e-Bingo and traditional bingo revenues”; and a decline in net income for wholly-owned AB Leisure Global Inc, “due to the termination of its contract with Belle Group [sic]”.

In July 2016 Belle Corp, an investor at the City of Dreams Manila casino resort in the Philippines, said it would terminate a revenue-sharing agreement with Leisure and Resorts World Corp.

The reported third-quarter decline in First Cagayan’s revenue occurred as uncertainty surrounds the future of the licensing system for online gaming in the Philippines.

In November a bill from the Speaker of the country’s House of Representatives proposed that the regulation of all games of chance that have been hitherto authorised by certain special economic zones – including the Cagayan Special Economic Zone – should be “centralised” and “consolidated” under a new regulator, “for the purposes of efficiency”.

For the first nine months of 2017, Leisure and Resorts World Corp’s net income declined 59.2 percent year-on-year, to PHP362.67 million, from PHP888.94 million in the prior-year period.