the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

The supermarket group is scaling profitably after a burst of store openings and acquisitions—but supplier payments, inventory build-up, and advances drained operating cash. In Philippine retailing, growth is often bought with rent, inventory, and patience. In the first quarter of 2026, Puregold Price Club showed that it could buy growth without sacrificing margins—at least on the income statement. The supermarket operator reported net sales of ₱58.8bn , up 12.1% from a year earlier, while net income rose 23.7% to ₱3.26bn . Earnings per share climbed to ₱1.14 , from ₱0.92 . The arithmetic was flattering: sales grew briskly, but profits grew faster.  The improvement was broad-based. Gross margin rose to 20.1% , from 19.6% a year earlier. Operating margin improved to 8.1% , from 7.6% . Net margin rose to 5.6% , from 5.0% . For a grocer, where price competition is fierce, and cost inflation rarely sleeps, half a percentage point of gross-margin expansion is not trivial. Management cr...

Two Philippine property firms sell aspiration. One has turned it into a fast-growing urban village machine; the other into a quieter luxury balance sheet. In Philippine property law, “premium” is an elastic term. It can mean a marble lobby, a Makati address, a concierge, a mall with a better perfume cloud, or simply the ability to borrow billions without looking desperate. In the first quarter of 2026, Rockwell Land and Shang Properties offered two different definitions of the term. Rockwell looked like the more energetic builder: bigger, faster-growing, and more aggressive. Shang looked like the more patrician owner: slower, richer in equity, and cushioned by hotels, malls and trophy addresses. The numbers tell the first story plainly. Rockwell reported ₱6.455bn in consolidated revenue , up 45% from a year earlier, while net income rose to ₱1.433bn and income attributable to the parent climbed 67% to ₱1.291bn . Its growth came mainly from residential development, which supplied ₱...

  The Philippine ingredients maker has left its capex headache behind. Now comes the harder problem: selling more. For much of the past few years, investors in D&L Industries had a simple question: when would the Batangas plant stop consuming capital and start producing returns? In the first quarter of 2026, the answer became clearer. The new facility, once the centerpiece of a heavy investment cycle and a drag on financial ratios, has now logged its sixth consecutive profitable quarter . Capital spending, no longer the main strain on the balance sheet, has faded from the foreground. But business stories rarely end when construction does. With the plant finally contributing, a more prosaic but more important question has taken its place: can D&L grow revenues again? The company’s first-quarter results offered a study in contrasts. Net income rose 5% year on year to ₱716.7m , a respectable showing in a volatile environment. Gross margin improved to 13.4% , from 12.7% a year...

The Philippine specialty manufacturer had a banner year for sales. The harder question is whether those sales can again be converted into cash. In most years, a 36% jump in revenue would be cause for uncomplicated celebration. At D&L Industries , a Philippine maker of food ingredients, oleochemicals, specialty plastics, and outsourced consumer products, sales rose to ₱55.39bn in 2025 , from ₱40.67bn a year earlier. Net income rose too, by 11% to ₱2.59bn . The trouble is that the top line grew much faster than the profit line. Gross profit increased by only 15% to ₱7.21bn , a respectable showing but one that betrayed the nature of the boom: part volume, part pricing, part inflation. D&L sold more, but it also sold costlier molecules. That makes 2025 a useful year for understanding D&L’s business. The company is not a typical consumer manufacturer with brands on supermarket shelves. It is more often hidden inside other firms’ products: the fat in a noodle, the ingredient in ...

In Philippine property, family names still matter—but bond coupons matter more. Rockwell Land Corporation, backed by the Lopez group, and Filinvest Land, Inc., led by the Gotianun family, both tap the same domestic capital market, sell into the same property cycle, and borrow in the same currency. Yet in 2026, investors charged them very different prices for money. Rockwell raised three-year bonds at 5.5666% and five-year bonds at 5.8595% in March; Filinvest Land’s subsequent three-year bond came at 7.3993% in June. The gap is not merely a spread. It is the market’s shorthand for confidence, coverage, and cash-flow comfort. The comparison is especially striking because FLI is not obviously the weaker borrower by conventional balance-sheet optics. As of March 31, 2026, FLI reported ₱82.63bn of loans and bonds payable and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.85x . ROCK, with ₱50.57bn of debt outstanding, reported a higher debt-to-equity ratio of 1.04x . On book leverage alone, FLI looks more...