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Aboitiz-Backed UBP Posts a Q1 2026 Margin Comeback, But Bond Losses Bite

  After a difficult stretch, Union Bank of the Philippines has rediscovered the pleasures of spread income. But bond-market losses and a weakening deposit mix show that the recovery still comes with strings attached. In banking, good quarters often arrive quietly. There is no factory line to inspect, no cargo ship to count, no mall foot traffic to observe. Instead, the evidence appears in basis points, provisioning lines, and the stubborn arithmetic of funding costs. By that measure, Union Bank of the Philippines had a conspicuously better first quarter in 2026. UBP reported net income of ₱3.83bn for the three months ended March 31st, 2026, up 167% from ₱1.43bn a year earlier. Net revenues—net interest income plus other income—rose to ₱21.73bn , around 12% higher year on year. For a bank that has spent recent years digesting expansion, digital investment, and higher credit costs, the quarter looked less like a sudden windfall than a demonstration of operating leverage finally w...
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Globe’s GCash Bet Has Become a Bank-Sized Profit Machine

  Mynt, the parent of GCash, now earns more than UnionBank, Security Bank, and RCBC—and nearly as much as PNB and Chinabank. There was a time when GCash was spoken of as a payments app, a convenient wrapper around mobile money. That description now feels quaint. In Globe Telecom’s first-quarter 2026 results, Mynt—the parent company of GCash—reported ₱5.6 billion in net income for the three months ended March 31, 2026, on ₱20.9 billion in revenues . Globe’s own equity share from Mynt reached ₱1.927 billion , reflecting its 34% stake after dilution from MUFG’s investment.  That puts Mynt in an unusual place in Philippine finance: not quite a bank, but earning like one. In the same quarter, UnionBank earned ₱3.8 billion , Security Bank earned ₱2.7 billion , and RCBC earned ₱2.7 billion . Mynt’s quarterly profit was therefore comfortably ahead of those of the listed lenders. Meanwhile, it came within range of PNB’s ₱6.37 billion and Chinabank’s ₱6.8 billion —institutions with l...
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SM’s First-Quarter Strength Points to a Bigger Dividend

  SM Investments’ latest quarter suggests that the Philippines’ most important conglomerate is not merely growing. It is becoming more distributable. In the Philippine corporate landscape, few institutions resemble a national economic barometer as closely as SM Investments Corporation . Its tills ring in supermarkets and department stores; its malls absorb weekend foot traffic and weekday errands; its banks finance households and firms; its portfolio companies touch logistics, energy, mining, and other arteries of commerce. When SM does well, it is often because the Filipino consumer, the landlord, the lender, and the capital allocator are all, to varying degrees, doing well too. The company’s first-quarter results for 2026 were not spectacular in the way a technology stock’s numbers might be spectacular. There was no sudden doubling of sales, no breathless narrative of disruption. Instead, SM produced something more characteristic of a mature conglomerate with formidable market po...
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SGP: Harvesting Dividends from the Nation’s Grid

  Synergy Grid’s parent company is less an operating business than a listed sluice gate for cash from the Philippine power grid There are companies that build, companies that borrow, and companies that harvest. Synergy Grid & Development Phils., Inc., known on the stock exchange as SGP , belongs to the last category. Its 2025 parent-company accounts reveal a remarkably simple machine: collect dividends from interests tied to National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, keep head-office costs modest, and send much of the cash onward to shareholders. In 2025, that machine worked rather well. Parent-company net income more than doubled to ₱3.57bn , from ₱1.75bn a year earlier, almost entirely because dividend income rose to ₱3.58bn , from ₱1.78bn .  SGP is not, in the conventional sense, a bustling operating company. Its parent income statement contains no great variety of commercial life. Management income was ₱48m , unchanged from 2024; interest income was ₱25.5m ; divide...
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Puregold Outperforms 7-Eleven in Q1 2026 Profitability

  In the Philippine retail sector, convenience is on the rise. But in the first quarter of 2026, profitability belonged to the supermarket. In the theatre of Philippine consumer retail, Philippine Seven has the more glamorous stage. Its 7-Eleven stores glow late into the night, scattered across city corners, provincial highways, and residential clusters. By the end of March 2026, the company operated 4,575 stores after opening 98 and closing 14 during the quarter, and it still aimed to reach 5,000 stores by year-end. Yet the quarter’s more compelling business story was not written under fluorescent convenience-store signage. It was written in the aisles of Puregold , where baskets are larger, supplier rebates matter, and operating leverage does what it's supposed to do. In the first quarter of 2026, Puregold Price Club decisively outperformed Philippine Seven in profitability , even as both companies benefited from resilient Filipino consumption.  The headline numbers tell t...
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Seven-Eleven Q1 2026 Sales Rise, Costs Rise Faster

Philippine Seven’s sales machine is humming again. Its cash machine, for now, is working harder than it looks. At first glance, Philippine Seven Corporation’s first quarter looked like the sort of result a retailer might happily place near the till: more customers, more stores, more sales. Systemwide sales rose by 13.2% to ₱26.09bn , while revenue from contracts with customers climbed 14.2% to ₱24.84bn . Same-store sales growth, the industry’s favored test of whether existing shops are doing more than merely existing, rebounded to 4.4% , a sharp reversal from the 1.2% decline recorded a year earlier. Net income, too, rose—though by a more modest 4.7% to ₱628.8m .  But retail is a business of small margins and large numbers. In the Philippine Seven’s case, the large numbers are getting larger, and not all in the right places. The company’s general and administrative expenses rose 19.2% to ₱7.48bn , handily outpacing revenue growth. What the top line gave, utilities, manpower, logis...
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Sta. Lucia’s Q1 2026: The Inventory Mountain Grows Again, but Margins Save the Quarter

  Sta. Lucia Land’s first-quarter results show a developer earning better margins from fewer climbers In property, as in mountaineering, altitude can be impressive until the air thins. Sta. Lucia Land, Inc. began 2026 with a balance sheet that still looked vast, national, and land-rich. But its first-quarter figures also showed that the company’s central challenge from 2025 has not gone away. The inventory mountain grew again . Cash declined further. Debt was pushed farther into the future, but not extinguished. Demand remained soft. Yet, in a twist that will please accountants more than salesmen, margins improved materially because the properties sold in the quarter were more profitable ones.  The headline number was reassuring at first glance. Net income rose slightly to ₱949.37m in the first quarter of 2026 , from ₱938.05m a year earlier. That was achieved despite total income falling to ₱2.47bn , from ₱2.64bn in the first quarter of 2025. The business, therefore, earned...
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