MANILA - PhilWeb Corp. said its shareholders have voted to increase the par value of the company's stocks to accommodate several institutional investor groups.

In a disclosure to the local bourse, PhilWeb said it has raised the par value of its shares to P1 from 1 centavo apiece. The move is seen to attract institutional investors, who were precluded from investing in PhilWeb due to their internal rules disallowing investments in "penny stock" companies.

"With the new par value, we expect interest in PhilWeb shares to jump," PhilWeb Vice Chairman Eric Recto said.

PhilWeb reported a 52% growth in profits for the first 6 months of the year, owing to the strong performance of its Internet gaming business. The company said its net income reached P227.6 million as of end-June from P149.6 million in the same period last year.

According to PhilWeb President Dennis Valdes, the company is expected to post a net income of P584 million for 2009, twice last year's P292 million. He said growth be driven mainly by the quicker expansion of PAGCOR (Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.) e-Games cafes, the company's major source of revenues for the first half of the year.

"We expect to hit 200 cafes by year-end," Valdes said. PhilWeb opened 29 e-Games cafes as of end-June, bringing the company's total Internet gaming shops to 150.

PhilWeb is an active partner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), through the Premyo sa Resibo (prize in receipts) raffle, which is aimed at encouraging consumers to ask for official receipts for every purchase made. The company said PSR is "a nationwide, mobile phone text-based raffle program where consumers send in data from their official receipts in exchange for electronic generated raffle entries."

Next month, PhilWeb said it is set to launch Resibonanza with the BIR to complement their PSR raffle. The company is also studying acquisitions in the technology-enabled gaming sector, which Valdes said may be announced in the coming months.