the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

House of Investments Inc. is starting to look like a different animal. Long viewed as a diversified Yuchengco holding company, HI is increasingly becoming a listed route into the group’s insurance and financial-services cash flows. The change is showing up most clearly at the parent-company level, where dividend income — not operating revenue — is now the main earnings engine. In 2025, HI parent booked ₱806.2 million in dividend income , composed of ₱714.7 million from subsidiaries , ₱86.5 million from associates , and ₱5.0 million from entities under common control . Parent net income was ₱855.3 million , meaning dividends accounted for almost all of the parent’s profit base. That is the core of the investment story: HI is no longer just a conglomerate with scattered assets. It is becoming a dividend platform, and the platform is increasingly tilted toward insurance and financial services. The group’s financial-services segment generated about ₱30.99 billion in 2025 revenue and rough...

  iPeople Inc. delivered the kind of 2025 numbers most Philippine education companies would envy: revenue climbed 16.7% to about ₱6.22 billion, powered by higher enrollment, new programs and a broader push into digital learning. Yet for all the operational progress, the market’s next question is becoming harder to ignore: What comes after steady execution? The education holding company behind Mapúa University, National Teachers College and University of Nueva Caceres has spent the past few years proving that scale in Philippine private education can still produce growth. In 2025, the formula was straightforward but effective: more students, more programs and more ways to deliver instruction. iPeople said average enrollment reached 84,088 students, up 12.15% from a year earlier, while management tied revenue growth to higher enrollment, the earlier start of classes at some schools and the rollout of new business and health sciences offerings linked to Mapúa’s collaboration with Ariz...