Vista Land extends buyback plan

Written by Honey Madrilejos-Reyes / Reporter

Thursday, 30 April 2009 19:59

VISTA Land & Lifescapes Inc. (VLL) extended for another six months its share buyback program, it said in a disclosure to the stock exchange on Thursday. The Villar-led company said it plans to spend a maximum amount of $25 million for the program, which will take effect until November 12, 2009. VLL launched the buyback program on November 12, 2007 and after a year, it decided to extend it up to May 12. “As of April 30, we have bought back a total of 320,686,000 shares with an aggregate value of about P619.10 million [exclusive of other charges],” it said. At the end of Thursday’s trading, VLL shares were valued P1.06 each. The company, in its pursuit to take advantage of the growing demand for low- to mid-income products, has allotted a capital expenditure of P7.7 billion this year. The amount is 7-percent lower than what it actually spent last year which was P8.3 billion. “We launched 32 new projects in 2008 valued at about P25 billion. We will continue to launch more projects this year, but we are being quite conservative given the generally guarded market sentiment,” said senior vice president for finance Ricardo Tan Jr. Twenty-eight projects are in the pipeline, which are expected to generate about P23 billion in revenues for the company.