the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

  Dominion Holdings could absorb the companies controlling Tampakan, merge with Atlas Mining, and become widely held after SM Investments distributes its Dominion shares. The ambitious sequence would conserve cash, but valuations, shareholder votes and billions of dollars in mine financing stand in the way. The Sy family’s effort to build a Philippine mining champion began with a listed holding company, a producing copper mine, and one of Southeast Asia’s largest undeveloped copper-gold deposits. The harder question is how to put those pieces together without exhausting the cash needed to operate and develop them. Dominion Holdings Inc., controlled by the Sy family’s privately held Monte Sur Equity Holdings Inc. and chaired by Isidro Consunji, has begun assembling a mining portfolio around Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. and the Tampakan copper-gold project in Mindanao. The first confirmed step is a proposed share-swap merger with Indophil Resources Phils. Inc. and ...

  The Philippine banking giant’s core interest earnings increased in the first half of 2026. Much of that additional value, however, flowed to employees, service providers and the government rather than landing on the bottom line. At first glance, BDO Unibank’s first-half results appeared uneventful. The country’s largest bank reported ₱40.85 billion in net profit for the six months ended June 30, barely changed from ₱40.76 billion a year earlier. Earnings attributable to shareholders of the parent bank increased just 0.3 percent, while basic earnings per share edged up by one cent, to ₱7.56.  But beneath that nearly static bottom line, a more dynamic redistribution of economic value was taking place. BDO’s net interest income—the difference between what it earned from loans and investments and what it paid to depositors and other creditors—rose 10.6 percent, to ₱108.51 billion. Even after the bank set aside substantially more money for possible credit losses, net interest inc...