the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

  The pleasing thing about airline earnings is that they arrive in large, round numbers. The dangerous thing is that they often conceal the balance-sheet strain required to produce them. PAL Holdings’ 2025 results belong firmly in that tradition: respectable at first glance, even encouraging, but rather less reassuring when read below the fold. Yes, the group earned ₱10.07bn on revenues of ₱183.83bn , up from ₱8.12bn the year before. Yes, it carried 16.29mn passengers , increased flights to 115,007 , and was recognised as the No. 1 on-time airline in Asia Pacific with 83.12 per cent punctuality. Operationally, this is a business that has plainly improved. Financially, it remains more brittle than the headline suggests.  That distinction matters. PAL’s strongest argument is operational competence. Passenger numbers rose 4.3 per cent , cargo revenues grew 3.7 per cent to ₱9.49bn , and ancillary revenues surged 25.4 per cent to ₱17.33bn , lifting their share of total revenu...

  There is a difference between a company that withholds dividends because it must and one that does so because it still has better uses for capital. On the evidence of Citicore Renewable Energy Corporation’s 2025 numbers, CREC still belongs in the second camp. For now, at least, this looks less like a business denying shareholders cash and more like one still trying to turn capital into scale. That distinction matters. In the Philippine market, investors are often willing to tolerate light distributions only if they can see a credible buildout story in return. CREC’s report offers such a story in plain arithmetic: the company ended 2025 with 14 operating solar assets and 597.2 MW of installed capacity , while maintaining an extensive pipeline that includes 2,898 MW of solar and 45 MW of wind under construction , plus 540 MW of wind in advanced development . It also secured 1,212 MW of additional renewable energy capacity through the Department of Energy’s Green Energy Auction Pr...

  There are moments in capital markets when the most revealing disclosure is the one that never arrives . That is where Lopez Holdings Corporation (LPZ) now appears to stand: a flagship listed holding company whose chairman and chief executive, Federico “Piki” Lopez , was reported to have been removed as president of Lopez Inc. , the group’s private controlling shareholder and ultimate parent, only for a Mandaluyong court to stop the move through injunctive relief. Public reports say the challenged board resolutions were passed on February 27, 2026 , and that the court’s writ dated March 26 barred their enforcement. Those same reports say Lopez Inc. owns 54.74 per cent of LPZ .  And yet, on the public record visible through PSE EDGE and on LPZ’s own disclosures page, the recent stream of LPZ filings does not show a case-related clarification or a dedicated material-information filing on this governance rupture. What the public record does show are routine items: a March 12 ...

There is a particular appeal to companies that promise excitement in presentation and monotony in cash flow. Citicore Energy REIT, the Philippines’ first energy REIT, belongs squarely in that camp. Its 2025 results show a business that has done what income investors ask of it: keep rents steady, margins fat, and dividends moving in a reassuringly narrow band. Rental income was ₱1.88bn in 2025, barely changed from 2024, while net income was a similarly steady ₱1.43bn . Cash flow from operations, at ₱1.80bn , remained comfortably ahead of the cash actually paid out in dividends. That matters because REIT investors are not buying drama; they are buying durability. CREIT’s annual dividend has shown precisely that quality. The company paid ₱0.202 a share in 2025, little changed from ₱0.201 in 2024 and up from ₱0.198 in 2023, while continuing its practice of quarterly distributions and maintaining a payout well above the REIT law’s minimum threshold. Since year-end, CREIT has even declar...

There are few more reliable tests of corporate stamina than the airline industry. It is a sector where capital intensity, currency swings, fuel volatility and operational fragility can expose weak balance sheets with brutal speed. By that standard, Cebu Pacific’s 2025 numbers matter not simply because they are better than the year before, but because they suggest something more consequential: the Philippine low-cost carrier is beginning to look like a business that has moved beyond recovery and back into disciplined expansion. The headline figures are persuasive. Revenue rose 14.3 per cent to ₱119.9bn , with passenger revenue reaching ₱80.8bn , cargo ₱7.2bn and ancillary sales ₱32.0bn . Net income climbed to roughly ₱12.3bn , more than double the prior year, while operating income advanced 25 per cent to ₱11.5bn . EBITDA reached about ₱30.9bn , implying a margin of 25.8 per cent . These are not the numbers of an airline merely muddling through; they are the numbers of one regaining ...

  At first glance, the latest Lopez family rupture looks oddly small-bore. Bloomberg reported that the dispute inside Lopez Inc. turned on a proposal to use ₱2 billion of reserve funds to inject fresh capital into ABS-CBN , with Federico “Piki” Lopez opposing the move and later challenging his removal as president of the family holding company. The Philippine Daily Inquirer separately reported that a Mandaluyong court has since frozen the board action that sought to replace him, exposing a rare and public split inside one of the country’s most prominent business dynasties. Taken literally, it is a fight over a sum that appears modest against the historical scale of the Lopez name.  But that reading is almost certainly too literal. Families with large, layered corporate structures do not usually go to court, destabilise boards and fracture succession lines over an amount they regard as merely incidental. The more convincing interpretation is that the ₱2 billion is only the...

There is something almost cruel in the symmetry of the Lopez family’s current drama. One of the Philippines’ most storied business dynasties — a clan whose name once stood for media power, boardroom reach and elite corporate permanence — now finds itself publicly divided over a listed family stake worth only about ₱9.4 billion at prevailing market prices. The immediate trigger is a leadership battle inside Lopez, Inc. , after a court blocked an attempt to remove Federico “Piki” Lopez as president and replace him with Rafael Lopez , in a dispute involving a faction aligned with Eugenio “Gabby” Lopez III . But beneath the procedural arguments and family alignments lies a harder truth: this is a contest over the last concentrated lever of Lopez control.  The arithmetic is stark. The Top 100 shareholders report for Lopez Holdings Corp. shows that Lopez, Inc. holds  2,473,707,550 shares in aggregate, spread across four registered lines. Against 4,491,233,837 outstanding shares ,...