The Philippines, whose stock market has performed well in the last four years, is attracting a new batch of foreign institutional investors keen on including local equities in their portfolios for the first time, according to First Metro Securities Brokerage Corp.

Philippine-listed companies has recently bought by FirstMetroSec to this year’s Singapore leg of the Pulse of Asia Conference who are organized by the DBSVickers Pte. Ltd. , this is a part of the new research collaboration between these two institutions.

“The response from the regional fund managers, the Philippine companies we brought to the conference and our hosts was overwhelmingly positive. Roughly 80 percent of these institutional investors have not previously met the Philippine companies we brought and expressed strong interest in our market,” FirstMetroSec president Gonzalo Ordoñez said in a statement.

Recentlt bought companies are Robinsons Land Corp. (RLC), infrastructure holding firm Metro Pacific Investment Corp. (MPI) and retailer Puregold Price Club Inc. (PGOLD).

“The small group sessions of the Philippine companies were packed. There were no one-on-one meetings possible since all time slots were filled. The program was scheduled to start at 9 a.m. but RLC had to begin at 8 a.m. to accommodate all interested fund managers. A majority of MPI’s meetings were with fresh names, despite their long exposure in the region,” Ordoñez said.
“Several participants I spoke with particularly mentioned how interested they were in the prospects of Puregold, with one initially exclaiming ‘so it isn’t a mining stock!’ and breaking out in laughter. They cited the prospects of the consumer sector and Puregold’s interesting story in particular,” he said.

The said conference was attended by around 400 regional fund managers and over 85 listed companies from Indonesia, Singapore, China, South Korea, Hong Kong , Malaysia and the Philippines.