The United Kingdom’s Mobilizing Institutional Capital Through Listed Product Structures (Mobilist) programme has made its maiden initial public offer (IPO) investment in the Philippines on June 7 with a US$12.5 million investment in Citicore Renewable Energy Corporation (CREC)’s IPO on the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Mobilist is an intervention under the wider British Investment Partnership, the initiative by which the UK seeks to deliver financial and technical assistance to support infrastructure development and green transition in the Philippines and across the Southeast Asia region.

“Mobilist is one of our anchor IPO investors,” says Oliver Tan, CREC president and CEO. “They came in during the book build. This is their first investment [… which represents] a significant portion of the IPO offer size.”

CREC hopes the successful IPO will help propel the company towards its goal of becoming the country’s largest power producer in the next five years. At present, it has a gross total installed capacity of 285 megawatts.

“The goal really is to become the largest, if not [one of the] top three largest power generation companies in the Philippines, and we have a five-year time horizon to achieve that goal,” Tan adds, noting that CREC is planning to build and commission 1 gigawatt (GW) of power capacity per year over the next five years.”

In addition to solar power, CREC says that it has plans to develop onshore wind and battery energy storage systems in the medium term, as well as offshore wind in the longer-term horizon.

Ross Ferguson, Mobilist’s programme lead under the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, states that the programme believes the CREC IPO will “pave the way for other businesses devoted to enabling a secure, clean and expanding energy supply for the people of the Philippines.

“CREC’s listing demonstrates that public markets can finance sustainable development at scale and potentially play a powerful role in financing the energy transition in the Philippines and other emerging markets.”

CREC, which successfully completed its IPO on Friday, lists on the main board of the bourse. It raised about 5.3 billion Philippine pesos (US$90.58 million), with shares sold at 2.70 pesos per share, representing 1,785,715,000 common shares, with a 10% over-allotment option of up to 178,572,000 secondary common shares.

Mobilist and the Philippine Stock Exchange inked a partnership in July 2023, aiming to increase and encourage investments in the sustainable development sector of the country.