BPI to sell its entire 15% GoTyme Bank stake back to the Gokongweis

Zobel Family banking unit BPI [BPI 122.50, up 0.6%] [link] disclosed that its board of directors has approved the sale of BPI’s stake in GoTyme Bank to a subsidiary of JG Summit [JGS 35.55, up 0.7%] (~744 million shares) and a company called Giga Investment Holdings Pte. Ltd. (~8 million shares) at a price of P1.20/share. BPI acquired the stake when it merged with Robinsons Bank. The sale will raise approximately P902 million for BPI, and resolve concerns that BPI had over “any potential conflict of interest” created as a result of the “significant overlap” of the product offerings between GoTyme and BPI. GoTyme is one of just six banks to receive a digital banking license from the BSP.

MB bottom-line: There’s been a lot of negative press about digital banks in recent weeks, with the BSP announcing that only two of the six licensed digital banks are currently profitable. We don’t know if GoTyme is one of the profitable ones or if it’s one of the four digibanks operating at a loss, but it doesn’t look like GoTyme’s potential financial performance was the driver behind this deal. The BPI board already has the benefit of the Gokongwei Family’s knowledge and experience through the terms of the merger, so maybe this was just a tidy optimization deal where the parties were able to quickly hammer out a cash sale to iron out a weird little post-merger wrinkle. 

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