the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

  VITRO REIT will show whether Philippine investors will accept infrastructure growth in exchange for a lower yield. PLDT’s VITRO REIT is not merely a property flotation. It is a test of whether investors will value Philippine data centers as critical infrastructure, operating platforms, and income-producing real estate. The Philippines’ newest real-estate story contains little real estate of the familiar sort. There are no malls to fill, no office towers to lease to call centers, no residential towers to sell by the square meter. The proposed VITRO REIT consists of data halls, racks, cooling systems, power redundancy, and fiber connections—the dull but indispensable plumbing of a digital economy. Its sponsor, ePLDT , a wholly owned subsidiary of PLDT , plans to sell up to 2.2bn existing shares , including the over-allotment option, at up to ₱11 a share , potentially raising ₱24.2bn through a secondary offering. VITRO REIT itself will receive none of the proceeds; the money g...

  In Philippine telecoms, the contest between Manny Pangilinan’s PLDT and the Ayalas’ Globe is no longer only about whose network is faster, whose fiber reaches farther, or whose mobile brand occupies more Filipino pockets. It is increasingly a quieter struggle: who can carry the heavy debt of the 5G and fiber era with less strain? The first-quarter 2026 numbers show two giants trying to normalize after years of capital intensity. PLDT remains the larger machine, with ₱56.5bn in revenues and ₱28.3bn in EBITDA , against Globe’s ₱45.7bn in revenues and ₱22.2bn in EBITDA . Yet size is not the same as comfort. PLDT’s earnings engine is bigger, but its leverage and liquidity metrics look more stretched. Globe, smaller but nimbler, presents the cleaner deleveraging story. PLDT’s advantage is obvious at first glance. Its EBITDA base of ₱28.3bn in the first quarter exceeded Globe’s ₱22.2bn , giving Pangilinan’s group a broader cash-profit cushion to absorb interest, lease, depreciation,...

In the Philippine telecom market, the contest for investors’ loyalty has long been measured in signal strength, subscriber counts, and fiber kilometers. But in 2026, another battlefield is taking shape: the dividend crown . On one side stands Manuel V. Pangilinan , the “MVP” of Philippine corporate life, whose PLDT Inc. remains the country’s telecom cash machine—large, entrenched, and disciplined in its dividend framework. On the other hand is Dennis Anthony Uy of Converge ICT Solutions Inc., whose younger fiber challenger is beginning to look less like a growth-only broadband insurgent and more like a credible dividend-growth story. Their first-quarter 2026 results tell a nuanced story. PLDT looks better equipped to defend its dividend. Converge looks better placed to grow one. PLDT: The incumbent with the cash engine PLDT’s first-quarter numbers still carry the heft of an incumbent. Revenue rose 2% year-on-year to ₱56.5 billion , while EBITDA increased 2% to ₱28.3 billion , with EBI...

  For years, PLDT was treated by income investors as something close to a utility with a generous cheque attached. Its networks carried calls, data, and broadband traffic; its shares carried the promise of yield. But the first quarter of 2026 suggests that Manny V. Pangilinan’s telecoms flagship is entering a more austere dividend age: not one of abrupt retreat, but of careful, deliberate trimming. The evidence is hiding in plain sight. PLDT declared a regular common dividend of ₱46 per share for the first quarter of 2026, down from ₱47 per share a year earlier. The decline is only one peso, hardly dramatic. Yet it matters because it confirms the direction of policy. PLDT’s dividend is not being abandoned; it is being rationed. The company’s own numbers explain why. PLDT reported telco core income of ₱8.58 billion in the first quarter, down 2% from ₱8.78 billion in the same period last year. This is the critical measure. Since 2019, PLDT has based its regular dividend payout o...

The water utility’s latest quarter points to a familiar Philippine infrastructure equation: resilient demand, heavy capital spending, meaningful leverage, and dividends that can run ahead of near-term free cash flow. Maynilad Water Services Inc. delivered the kind of first-quarter numbers that normally reassure investors in a defensive utility. Revenue rose 6.2% to ₱9.09 billion in the three months ended March 31, while net income climbed 10.3% to ₱3.99 billion , helped by higher billed volumes, tariff support, and a broader customer base. The company also kept improving service indicators, with billed volume up to 136.1 million cubic meters , non-revenue water down to 30.7% at period-end, and service coverage inching higher.  Yet the quarter also revived an older Manila market archetype — the infrastructure company that pays while it builds. Beneath the headline earnings growth sat a capital structure and cash-flow profile that increasingly resembles PLDT Inc. in its heaviest ...

  In Philippine boardroom warfare, the concept didn’t arrive with Federico “Piki” Lopez. It had an earlier, rougher incarnation in the battle for PLDT, where Antonio “Tonyboy” Cojuangco used a poison pill not simply to fend off raiders, but to make himself the indispensable counterparty in any serious bid for control.   The term is back in circulation because of First Gen Corp., where the Lopez family’s internal feud has dragged a modern version of the tactic into public view. First Gen confirmed in April that its agreements with Enrique Razon Jr.’s Prime Infrastructure contain change-of-management-control provisions that would let Prime Infra force a buyout of First Gen’s hydropower stake at a 25% discount if Piki and his team were removed during a defined period; First Gen added that the gas-plant stake could also be sold at the same discount if the clause were exercised. First Gen said those provisions were requested by Prime Infra and reflected the counterparty’s confide...

  The Asian Financial Crisis did not merely humble the conspicuous losers. It also forced one of Philippine business’s eventual winners into an extended and rather unsentimental workout: raise equity, sell what can be sold, renegotiate what cannot, and, if necessary, surrender even the trophy asset. In Philippine business memory, the aftermath of the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis is often told through the ordeals of the most visible dynasties and the most politically charged conglomerates. Yet the period was just as revealing for another camp: the First Pacific–Metro Pacific group led in the Philippines by Manuel V. Pangilinan . The group did not implode. But it most certainly bent. Metro Pacific Corporation (MPC) , then First Pacific’s Philippine flagship outside PLDT and a few other holdings, suffered a genuine balance-sheet squeeze as the peso weakened, interest rates rose, and foreign-currency borrowings suddenly looked less like clever leverage than an expensive misjudgment....