Govt sells 13% stake in Indocement at Rp 824b
Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government has sold its remaining 13 percent stake in the country's second largest cement maker, PT Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa, to the public for Rp 824 billion (US$98 million).
In a press statement on Thursday, the Office of the State Minister for State Enterprises said the 477 million shares, equivalent to 13 percent of the firm's entire shares, were sold for Rp 1,725 per share on Thursday.
The price was 4.2 percent lower than Indocement's closing price on Wednesday at Rp 1,800 per share.
Deputy minister for privatization at the Office of the State Minister for State Enterprises, Mahmuddin Yasin, said that by the end of this month the government would have raised about Rp 1.17 trillion from the sale of its share of Indocement.
"The government will raise total proceeds of approximately Rp 1.77 trillion from the divestment of Indocement .... We have completed our full exit from the company," said Mahmuddin in a statement.
Proceeds from the stake sales will be used to trim the budget deficit this year, which is an estimated Rp 34.4 trillion.
The sale on Thursday was executed through an accelerated overnight bookbuilding and was completed in 14 hours, with total demand of about 1.3 billion shares or almost three times larger than the amount of offered shares.
Previously, the government had a total 16.9 percent ownership in Indocement, which it received as compensation for the debts owed by the Salim group, the former owner of the company, to state banks.
On Wednesday, the government sold a 3.9 percent stake in Indocement to German-based cement producer HeidelbergCement AG at Rp 2,462 per share, raising about Rp 352 billion.
With the purchase, Heidelberg, Germany's biggest cement maker, became the majority shareholder of Indocement with a 65.12 percent stake. The remaining 13.5 percent is owned by PT Mekar Perkasa, 1.9 percent by Marubeni Corporation and 19.5 percent by the public.
Currently, Indocement operates nine cement plants in Citeureup, Bogor, two in Cirebon, West Java, and one in South Kalimantan, with a total production capacity of about 15.5 million tons per year.
Indocement is the ninth-best performer on the Jakarta stock exchange since the start of this year, with a 167 percent surge in its share prices.
Indocement sales revenue in the first nine months of this year declined to Rp 712 billion from Rp 952 billion in the same period last year on the back of lower foreign exchange gains.
However, the company recorded a 5 percent increase in net profit to Rp 3.16 billion, due mostly to a changed product pricing strategy.
The bourse suspended trading in Indocement shares on early Thursday, pending clarification of the government's divestment plan for the company.