the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

  A coal-and-power cash machine is still throwing off money. Just not quite as extravagantly as before. There is a difference in business between earning less and feeling poorer. Semirara Mining and Power Corporation, the Philippines’ coal baron with captive power plants strapped to its side, managed both in 2025. Reported net income fell to about ₱13.1bn , down a third from the year before. More tellingly, operating cash flow slid to roughly ₱16.4bn from ₱27.5bn —a drop of about 40% . In a company whose investment case has long rested on fat, frequent cash distributions, that is the number that stings. Profits flatter; cash pays dividends.  That distinction matters because Semirara is not merely a cyclical resource stock. It has become, in the minds of many local investors, a sort of irregular annuity: a company that pays in spring, and often surprises again in autumn. In 2025 , it still declared dividends of ₱13.8bn , lower than the ₱25.5bn distributed in 2024 but still ge...

  In most emerging markets, utilities are valued for their predictability. They collect monthly bills, raise tariffs only after a fight, and borrow prodigiously in the hope that investors will mistake ballast for glamour. Maynilad Water Services, newly listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange in November 2025, is trying to prove that a water monopoly can be both dull and ambitious at once: a regulated utility with the instincts of an infrastructure developer. Its 2025 annual report reads like the ledger of a company that has just acquired a larger sense of itself. The IPO brought fresh capital and public scrutiny; the operating business delivered sturdy growth; yet the central question remains whether today’s vast investment program will one day yield stronger cash flow, higher returns, and better per-share economics.  Maynilad begins from an enviable position. It serves what it describes as the largest water concession in Southeast Asia, covering 540 square kilometers across M...

First Gen’s “poison pill” may be dressed up as a key-man clause. But for investors, its real meaning is simpler: the company has tied billions of pesos of shareholder value to the continued primacy of one executive in the middle of an active family power struggle.   Enrique Razon Jr’s compliment to Federico “Piki” Lopez was flattering enough. Prime Infrastructure, First Gen says, insisted on a “change of management control” clause because it trusted Mr. Lopez and his team to execute two large pumped-storage hydro projects safely, efficiently, and on schedule. First Gen has even cast the arrangement as a “vote of confidence” from Mr. Razon — proof, in effect, that the company’s leadership was indispensable.  Yet the test of fiduciary responsibility is not whether a chief executive is admired by a counterparty. It is whether he converts that admiration into terms that protect the owners of the company he serves. On that standard, First Gen’s defense of its so-called poison pill ...

There is, at first glance, a straightforward case for Robinsons Retail Holdings (RRHI) . It is the more sprawling retail empire, ending 2025 with 2,763 stores across food, drugstores, department stores, DIY, and specialty formats, versus Puregold Price Club’s (PGOLD) 822 stores across Puregold, S&R, San Roque, and Merkado. RRHI also posted the more handsome gross margin : 24.6% on ₱210.4bn of net sales, compared with PGOLD’s 18.7% on ₱242.5bn . On the surface, the Gokongwei machine appears to be the more elegant retailer, extracting more gross profit from every peso of sales. Yet retailing is not won at the gross line. It is won after rent, labor, logistics, depreciation, interest, and the thousand petty tolls of expansion. And here, the advantage clearly tilts to PGOLD . Its operating income reached ₱17.3bn , equivalent to roughly 7.1% of sales, while RRHI’s stood at ₱10.4bn , or about 4.9% of sales. PGOLD’s consolidated net income was ₱11.34bn , for a 4.7% net margin . R...

  Universal Robina Corporation, one of the Philippines’ biggest branded food-and-beverage groups, turned in the sort of year that looks respectable from a distance and more awkward up close. Revenue rose to ₱168.0 billion in 2025, up 3.8% from the year before, suggesting that demand for snacks, beverages, and pantry staples remained intact. But operating income slipped 3.1% to ₱16.13 billion , while net income attributable to equity holders fell to ₱10.20 billion and earnings per share dropped to ₱4.77 from ₱5.39 . The broad impression was of a company that could still sell, but was finding it harder to turn those sales into clean, rising profit.  That tension showed up most starkly in cash. URC’s net cash provided by operating activities fell to ₱11.27 billion in 2025 from ₱18.98 billion in 2024—a decline of roughly 41% . The immediate temptation is to blame the collapsing profitability. Yet that would miss the more revealing part of the story. The bigger hit came fr...

The feud now spilling across LPZ, ABS, ROCK and FGEN is not merely a family quarrel; it is a corporate-governance issue at the top of listed companies. The Lopez family’s dispute has ceased to look like a private quarrel and begun to resemble a public-markets problem. ABS-CBN itself has said that this is “a family dispute and should remain so” and that it should not be fought in public. Yet it is being fought in public — through statements, counter-statements and litigation that now spill across companies connected to the group.  That matters because these are not merely family assets. Lopez Holdings, First Philippine Holdings, First Gen, Rockwell Land and ABS-CBN are all publicly listed companies , each with minority shareholders who did not sign up to become spectators in a dynastic power struggle. Public reporting shows that the conflict is no longer confined to the private holding company. It has extended into ABS-CBN, where the company confirmed that one director proposed a sh...

  In the world of listed utilities, dividend policy is often sold as a kind of promise: regular, predictable, almost mechanical. Aboitiz Power Corporation (AP) has such a promise. Its stated regular dividend policy is to distribute 50% of the previous year’s reported net income after tax —not core earnings, not EBITDA, and certainly not management’s preferred adjusted profit measure. That distinction, unremarkable in fat years, became the central drama of AP’s 2025 results. The company’s core net income after tax came in at roughly ₱33.1 billion , only slightly below 2024, yet reported net income fell to about ₱19.5 billion , largely because of a ₱13.5 billion to ₱13.9 billion impairment related to GNPower Mariveles . The dividend policy, in other words, ran directly into accounting reality. That collision matters because a payout policy tied to reported profit is less forgiving than one anchored to “core” earnings or free cash flow. A non-cash impairment may not immediately drain...

  For companies in telecoms, maturity is usually easy to spot. Growth slows, capital spending eases, management learns the language of “harvest”, and investors are offered the consolations of yield. Converge, the Philippine broadband operator, is not there yet. Its 2025 annual report instead depicts a business that is doing many things right—growing revenues, adding customers, keeping margins sturdy, and paying down debt—while still behaving less like a cash-yielding utility and more like a builder of digital infrastructure. That distinction matters. In 2025 Converge generated record consolidated revenues of ₱44.8bn , up 10.2% from the previous year, while EBITDA rose 10.0% to ₱27.0bn and net income climbed 9.6% to ₱11.9bn ; EBITDA margin remained a lofty 60.4% , and management highlighted an industry-leading 17.7% return on invested capital . Those are not the numbers of a company losing operational discipline. They are the numbers of one that appears to be executing well. The...