Forbes
Villar Land has accepted the opinion of external auditor Punongbayan & Araullo, an affiliate of Grant Thornton, to scrap the $22 billion valuation the company used for a land parcel it acquired from the companies owned by its controlling shareholder, billionaire Manuel Villar.
Villar Land (formerly Golden MV Holdings) has agreed to cut the valuation of its property in southern Metro Manila by 99%, sending the developer’s stock price to a record decline and wiping out $3 billion from the net worth of its controlling shareholder, billionaire Manuel Villar.
The Philippine-listed company has accepted the opinion of external auditor Punongbayan & Araullo, an affiliate of Grant Thornton, to scrap the 1.3-trillion-peso ($22 billion) valuation the company used for 366 hectares of prime land it acquired last year from the tycoon’s three privately held companies.
The revision comes after months of extensive discussions between Villar Land and Punongbayan & Araullo. With the property revalued at 8.7 billion pesos, the company’s audited net profit for full year 2024 has been restated to 1.4 billion pesos, down from the 999-billion-peso net profit it declared in an unaudited report in March.
Shares of Villar Land, which has been suspended from trading since May after failing to submit its audited financial report, resumed trading today, tumbling 30% to close at 1,608 pesos, a one-year low. That erased 29% from Villar’s net worth to $7.5 billion.
Despite today’s slump in Villar Land’s stock price, the company remains the country’s most valuable company with a market cap of $17.6 billion. That compares with the $14.3 billion market value of SM Investments Corp., the flagship company of the late retail tycoon Henry Sy that owns the country’s largest bank and shopping mall operator.
The huge profit bonanza Villar Land reported in March was due to the company booking a massive revaluation gain of 1.3 trillion pesos, for a land parcel that it had purchased from Villar’s privately held companies last October for 5.2 billion pesos. The property is part of the 3,500-hectare Villar City that the company aims to develop into a mixed-use residential and commercial estate.
