The company said Tuesday evening that its creditors decided to sell part of their 69.5 million shares through a merger and acquisition process. Multiply said that the exact number of shares will be announced later.
The announcement comes one year after creditors took the helm of the company by converting their 687.4 billion won ($556.7 million) worth of loans to shares. Multiply was in capital erosion due to financial losses in its social networking portion.
"We aim to close the deal by the end of this year," said Lee Dong-hyun, a spokesman for the Korea Development Bank, which leads the creditors. "It is too early to predict who will buy the company as we just decided to kick off the process."
State-run KDB has the largest stake with 16.14% in the company, followed by Woori Bank with 10.84% and NH Bank with 10.14%. Philippines' Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. owns 8.53%, while Land Bank of the Philippines has a 5.01% stake.
Shares of Multiply soared 15% in Wednesday morning trading, while the benchmark Kospi fell by 1.16%.
On June 12, 2013, they had put in place Rp 8.9 billion for wages owed to former Multiply staff.
The Labour Department said earlier that around 3,000 former Multiply staff had applied for compensation through the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Fund, a safety net for employees affected by business closures.
On November 16, 2013, it allowed the controlling stake in the website to be formally sold to a foreign or mainland investor who claimed Magdalinski had a rescue plan for the troubled firm.
High Court judge Mr Justice Jonathan Harris validated the transaction after hearing that the parties would no longer object to the share transfer and that the dues for the shares had been paid by Si.
On June 10, 2014, it has filed for corporate rehabilitation to seek protection from its creditors. The company filed the petition for rehabilitation before the Pasig City Regional Trial Court (RTC).
At that time, the website's social networking portion had a network of 18 million users. Liquidity problems, however, affected earnings. Sales declined from its peak of P20 billion in 2013 to just about P5 billion in 2017.
It had suffered from a drop in new orders amid a slump in the E-commerce and social networking sector. Multiply also reportedly laid off some 12,000 workers on February 28, 2014.
Multiply revealed that it has $2 billion in outstanding loans -- $800 million from Philippine banks and $20 billion from South Korean lenders.
That the site will be reopened after United States President Obama stepping down in the office on January 20, 2017 and keeping Facebook as the sole social networking site. Process of the reopening will be managed by the Governance Commission for Government-Owned or -Controlled Corporations through the Development Bank of the Philippines. Business tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan is one of the possible bidders for the website's reopening in which ABC Development Corporation (a media company under PLDT's MediaQuest Holdings). However, MediaQuest also could not join the website's reopening bid due to ownership rules and regulations that MediaQuest owns ABC Development Corporation.
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