Manila integrated resort developer Suntrust Resort Holdings said Friday it has reached an agreement with Hong Kong-listed Summit Ascent Holdings Inc under which the deadline for issuing the latter a Php13.5 billion (US$236 million) convertible bond instrument has been extended by 12 months.
According to a filing, the companies have agreed to extend the Long Stop Date for the agreement from 30 April 2024 to 30 April 2025, with no other changes made to the original subscription agreement.
That agreement, signed in July 2023, will see Summit Ascent – the controlling shareholder of Russia’s Tigre de Cristal casino resort near Vladivostok – subscribe to the convertible bonds with the subscription price to be set off against the sum of convertible bonds Summit Ascent subscribed to in 2020 and 2022.
Suntrust stated last year that the agreement would also set off interest owed under those 2020 and 2022 convertible bonds agreements after it failed to meet interest payment obligations for the 2020 convertible bonds on 30 December 2022 and on the 2022 convertible bonds on 10 June 2023.
Suntrust and Summit Ascent both count LET Group Holdings – formerly Suncity Group Holdings – as their parent company with LET holding a 51% stake in Suntrust and a 69.66% stake in Summit Ascent.
Summit Ascent said last July that it considered the subscription agreement to be important to the completion of Suntrust’s US$1.1 billion Manila casino development because the company’s failure to meet interest payments may otherwise deter outside investors from providing funding.
Part of the Westside City development in Manila’s Entertainment City precinct, the hotel and casino will when complete feature 281 gaming tables, 1,126 slot machines and 134 electronic table games. It will also include 475 luxury hotel rooms, a pool deck, spa, wellness center, a ballroom and MICE space, multiple theaters, a “grand opera house”, a food mall and four cinemas.
Suntrust revealed recently that the opening of the project had been postponed from late 2024 until early 2025.
