the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

  Fresh equity can repair the broadcaster’s balance sheet, but creditor banks tied to the Ayala and Aboitiz groups will determine whether the money finances a recovery—or merely repays old obligations. **MANILA—**ABS-CBN Corp.’s proposed ₱6 billion capital infusion gives the debt-laden media company something it has lacked since losing its broadcast franchise in 2020: time. Whether it produces a turnaround is another question. The broadcaster said I&C Holdings Corp. would invest ₱3.5 billion, while three Lopez family investment vehicles—Crème Investment Corp., Mantes Corp. and Presta Holdings Co.—would contribute a combined ₱2.2 billion. Lopez Inc. would invest another ₱300 million. ABS-CBN’s board approved the transaction on August 13, a day after the subscription agreements were signed. The company said the proceeds would be used for general corporate purposes.  The transaction would inject permanent capital without adding interest expense. I&C, established by invest...

Q1 2026 underscored why BDO still dominates in scale, while BPI leads in efficiency and returns. In Philippine banking, size and finesse rarely travel in equal measure. BDO Unibank, the country’s largest lender, resembles a financial archipelago unto itself: vast, deposit-rich and deeply embedded in the cash flows of households, malls, merchants and corporations. Bank of the Philippine Islands, older and more patrician, looks less like a sprawl and more like a carefully tuned machine. The first quarter of 2026 offered a useful contrast. Both banks made more money than a year earlier. Both were bruised by bond-market losses. But the manner of their performance revealed two quite different banking models. BDO still won on scale; BPI won on efficiency.  BDO reported net profit of ₱20.2bn , up 2.1% year on year , while BPI earned ₱17.0bn , up about 1.8% . On the surface, the larger bank won. Yet profit is only the first sentence of the story. BDO generated pre-impairment operating...

  The bank still has the bigger margin. The wallet still owns the daily habit. BPI’s free-transfer gambit shows how Ayala’s two finance champions are starting to collide. Ayala’s financial empire now has two engines that look increasingly alike from a customer’s phone. One is BPI , the old bank: deposit-rich, heavily regulated, and still highly profitable. The other is Mynt , the company behind GCash : younger, faster, and built around the daily habit of payments, transfers, and app-based finance. In the first quarter of 2026, BPI was still clearly the larger profit machine, generating ₱50.9bn in revenue and ₱17.0bn in net income, while Mynt generated ₱20.9bn in revenue and ₱5.6bn in net income. The margin comparison matters. BPI converted about 33.4% of revenue into net income, while Mynt converted about 26.8% . That makes BPI not only larger than GCash’s parent but also more profitable in terms of net income margin.  Yet the strategic pressure is moving in the other dir...

  In the first quarter of 2026, Bank of the Philippine Islands looked, at first glance, like the sort of bank investors usually like: large, profitable, liquid, and dull in the best possible way. It earned ₱17.02bn in consolidated net income , or ₱16.92bn attributable to BPI shareholders , on ₱57.05bn of interest income . Put differently, BPI generated about ₱0.30 of net income for every ₱1.00 of interest income —a handsome conversion rate for a banking franchise operating in a still-high-rate environment.  Yet the quarter also carried a reminder that banks do not merely lend money; they warehouse duration, credit risk, and market risk. BPI’s reported profit was resilient, rising 1.7% year on year to ₱16.92bn attributable to equity holders , but its total comprehensive income collapsed to ₱2.86bn , from ₱18.34bn a year earlier. The culprit was not a sudden operating loss but a large other comprehensive loss of ₱14.16bn, driven by a ₱13.59bn net fair-value loss on F...

  Using publicly disclosed 2025 dividend declarations and ownership stakes, Metrobank, BPI and BDO emerge as the biggest identifiable cash spigots to the parent holding companies of GT Capital, Ayala Corp. and SM Investments. When investors look at Philippine conglomerates, the eye usually goes first to malls, property launches, auto sales or telecom towers. But at the parent-company level, the more revealing question is simpler: which subsidiaries actually throw cash up to the holding company? On that test, the answer for the Ty, Zobel and Sy groups is strikingly similar. Their banks — Metrobank for GT Capital Holdings Inc., Bank of the Philippine Islands for Ayala Corp., and BDO Unibank for SM Investments Corp. — were the biggest identifiable dividend engines feeding the top of the house in 2025.  Start with GT Capital . The Ty family holding company’s ownership map ties it directly to Metrobank , and Metrobank’s own disclosures show that GT Capital owns 37.2% of the bank...

Two years after Bank of the Philippine Islands absorbed Robinsons Bank, the 2025 annual report shows a bank that is bigger, broader, and more lucrative — but also one carrying more credit risk, thinner buffers, and a more demanding balancing act. The deal that turned the Gokongwei group into a roughly 6% shareholder in Bank of the Philippine Islands was sold in 2022 as a way to expand BPI’s customer base, deposit franchise, and product reach, while opening the Ayala-led lender to a new corporate ecosystem spanning retail, property, food, and aviation. The merger formally took effect on January 1, 2024 , after regulatory approvals, with BPI as the surviving entity. Two annual cycles later, BPI’s 2025 Integrated Report and year-end earnings suggest that the broad strategic thesis has worked: the bank is larger, more visible, more digitally scaled, and paying bigger dividends. But the numbers also show the price of that expansion — higher bad-loan ratios, a much steeper provisioning bill...

  In corporate finance, there is a simple rule: when a firm’s overheads exceed its gross profit, survival depends not on operations but on patience. By 2025, ABS‑CBN had crossed that line. The company reported a gross profit margin of 16.52% , producing gross profit of roughly ₱2.6 billion on consolidated revenues of ₱15.85 billion , even as revenues declined 9% year‑on‑year . Against this, administrative, corporate, and support costs remained structurally larger—helping drive a net loss of ₱4.72 billion and a net income margin of –29.76% for the year . In a normal business, that arithmetic ends the discussion. Yet ABS‑CBN continues to operate, raising a different question: for how long will its financiers—among them institutions associated with the Aboitizes and the Ayalas—continue to forbear? A Cost Base Built for a Bigger Company ABS‑CBN’s overhead problem is not subtle. The firm remains profitable at the gross level, but general and administrative expenses, together with per...

  Technically defaulted loans, a ₱50‑billion gas windfall elsewhere in the group, and the quiet limits of relationship banking. In the Philippines’ compact world of family capitalism, debts are rarely just financial. They are social, reputational, and, at times, inter‑dynastic. That is why the technically defaulted bank loans of ABS‑CBN—once the country’s most powerful broadcaster—are being watched not merely by credit committees, but by the inner circles of three of the nation’s most prominent business families. On one side stand the Lopezes , controllers of ABS‑CBN and First Gen Corp. On the other sit their creditors: UnionBank , controlled by the Aboitiz family , and the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) , long dominated by the Ayala family . The sums at stake—roughly ₱12–13 billion in consolidated bank loans—are manageable for institutions of their size, but the issues they raise are not purely about recoverability. They go to the heart of how elite Philippine conglomerates ...