MANILA - Benpres Holdings Corp., the publicly listed holding firm of the Lopez Group, has sold its entire 24.5% stake in property unit Rockwell Land Corp. to subsidiary First Philippine Holdings Corp. (FPHC) for P1.5 billion.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Benpres said the sale involves 1.525 billion common shares and 673.75 million preferred shares of Rockwell, one of the country's high-end real estate developers.

"With the purchase, FPHC now owns a total of 49% of the outstanding capital stock of Rockwell," Benpres said, noting that power distributor Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) owns the balance of 51%.

Both Benpres and FPHC secured a "fairness opinion" from a third party, CLSA Exchange Capital Inc., for this transaction.

FPHC, in a separate disclosure, said the acquisition will complement its property business, which includes an industrial park in Sto. Tomas in Batangas and offices in Pasig City and Antipolo, Rizal.

The company is currently awash with cash after it raised P20 billion from the sale of its 20% interest in Meralco to Pilipino Telephone Corp., the new energy holding company of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.

It was planning to use sale proceeds to prepay debts and fund a joint venture with US-based SunPower Manufacturing Ltd. which services the growing solar energy sector.

FPHC holds the Lopez family's investments in power and manufacturing. Earlier, it was expecting a flat profit growth for 2009 given the slowdown in the economy.

But for the first 6 months of the year, the company booked a net income of P896 million, a reversal of its P230-million net loss in the same period last year, owing to higher income contribution from Meralco and lower foreign exchange losses.

abs-cbnNEWS.com is the online news department of ABS-CBN Interactive Inc., a subsidiary of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. ABS-CBN is a unit of Benpres, a holding firm of the Lopez Group.