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Hotel101 to be first Philippine company to list in U.S.

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Listing to be achieved through a SPAC merger

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Hotel101 to have equity value of over $2.3 bln

By Yantoultra Ngui and Neil Jerome Morales

SINGAPORE/MANILA, April 8 (Reuters) - Philippine real

estate firm DoubleDragon on Monday said subsidiary

Hotel101 Global will list on the Nasdaq in the United States via

a merger with special purpose acquisition company JVSPAC

Acquisition Corp. ( JVSA )

Hotel101 Global will become the first Philippine company to

list in the U.S. following the deal with the SPAC - a publicly

listed shell that raises funds to merge with a private entity.

The merger is likely to result in Hotel101 having an equity

value of over $2.3 billion, DoubleDragon, Hotel101 and JVSPAC

said in a joint statement. It will close in the second half of

the year with Hotel101 listing under ticker "HBNB".

"We believe that a NASDAQ listing will provide Hotel101 with

access to public capital markets and help accelerate our global

expansion plans," Hotel101 CEO Hannah Yulo-Luccini said in the

statement.

Hotel101 is the hotel arm of Philippines-listed

DoubleDragon, formed by tycoon Sia with Jollibee Foods

owner Tony Tan Caktiong.

It builds and operates hotels with standardized, 21 square

metre rooms that it sells individually to investors.

Hotel101's asset-light business model generates revenue

first from room sales and then from the recurring income from

day-to-day hotel operations, Yulo-Luccini said.

It is headquartered in Singapore and operates two hotels in

the Philippines, with three under development in Japan, Spain

and the U.S.

The firm aims to expand to 25 countries including China and

Saudi Arabia by 2026, and derive 95% of revenue from overseas.

JVSPAC is led by Albert Wong, former CEO of luxury products

distributor Kingsway Group - the sole distributor of Lamborghini

cars in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou, the statement showed.

The merger will see Hotel101 join a growing number of

Southeast Asian firms to list in the U.S., filling a void left

by Chinese companies that have paused such listings amid

Sino-U.S. tension.

Vietnamese EV maker VinFast listed in the U.S. in

August via a merger with SPAC Black Spade Acquisition. It now

commands a market value of some $10 billion, LSEG data showed.

In February, the parent of Malaysian budget airline AirAsia,

Capital A, finalised a deal to list its brand

management unit on the Nasdaq with SPAC Aetherium Acquisition

. That deal gave the unit, Capital A International, an

enterprise value of $1.15 billion.