the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

The striking thing about Shell Philippines’ 2025 performance is not that it sold less. It did. Net sales fell 5.1% to ₱231.1bn  from ₱243.6bn a year earlier, as lower pump prices pulled revenue down. What matters is what happened next: gross profit still rose 2% to ₱22.7bn , net income jumped 68.7% to ₱2.11bn , core earnings climbed 27.6% to ₱3.34bn , and EBITDA increased 8.8% to ₱11.99bn . For a company in a notoriously thin-margin, hypercompetitive business, this was not a mere cyclical rebound. It was evidence of a business that had become more disciplined, more selective, and—most importantly—more financially coherent. That coherence is easiest to see in cash. Shell Pilipinas generated ₱10.69bn in operating cash flow in 2025, up from ₱7.47bn in 2024, and swung to a free-cash-flow surplus of ₱2.1bn , from a ₱1.6bn deficit the year before. Management attributed the improvement to tighter inventory control, better logistics, stricter working-capital discipline, and more select...

  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...

On the surface, RFM still looks like the sort of company income investors are meant to love. In 2025, the group lifted revenue to ₱22.33 billion , up 3% from 2024, while operating income rose 8% to about ₱1.89 billion , net income climbed 14% to ₱1.62 billion , and EBITDA improved to about ₱2.69 billion . Liquidity also appeared comfortable, with the current ratio improving to 1.32x from 1.27x . At the parent-company level—the level that matters most for dividend declarations—sales rose to ₱15.23 billion , while net income increased to ₱1.75 billion and earnings per share improved to ₱0.52 from ₱0.46 . The board has rewarded shareholders accordingly. RFM declared ₱1.5 billion in cash dividends in 2025 , up from ₱1.3 billion in 2024 and ₱850 million in 2023 , maintaining a pattern of regular payouts through the year. At the parent-company level, that amounted to a payout of roughly 85%–86% of net income ; on some consolidated summaries in the annual report, the effective payout looke...

There are years when a property developer dazzles with ambition, and years when it impresses by restraint. For Megaworld, 2025 belonged to the latter category. The company still grew: consolidated revenues rose to ₱85.87bn , net income climbed to ₱24.06bn , and income attributable to the parent reached ₱21bn . But the more telling story was not simply that the developer sold more. It was that it emerged sturdier—less leveraged, less burdened by financing costs, and more able to fund itself from within. The numbers tell the tale of a balance sheet being quietly repaired. Interest-bearing loans and borrowings fell to ₱83.03bn in 2025 from ₱89.99bn a year earlier. Debt-to-equity improved to 0.34 times from 0.39 times , while net debt-to-equity eased to 0.27 times from 0.32 times . The current ratio edged up to 3.54 from 3.43 , a reminder that liquidity was moving in the right direction even as the group continued to spend on projects. That deleveraging showed up most clearly where in...

  Two former allies sold a bank together. Their heirs now offer a study in how family capitalism can fail in opposite ways. Kapitan Geny Lopez and John Gokongwei were once close business allies in the practical, old-Philippine-capitalism sense of the term: at PCIBank, Mr Lopez served as chairman, Mr Gokongwei as vice-chairman, and the two families were widely understood to be the bank’s principal shareholders and decision-makers before its sale in 1999. Their joint exit, part of a record-setting ₱31.9bn transaction that led to Equitable PCI Bank, looked at the time like a textbook redeployment of capital—an elegant retreat from banking into supposedly more strategic pursuits.  In retrospect, that sale reads less like an ending than a fork in the road. Both clans have since run into trouble in the pet businesses of their forefathers: ABS-CBN for the Lopezes, petrochemicals for the Gokongweis. Both businesses carry the emotional charge that only founding projects do. Yet the sim...

A holding company that collected billions in dividends, borrowed heavily, and still found itself pouring money into a subsidiary it would soon have to gut Conglomerates are meant to be shock absorbers. When one business stumbles, the others carry it. Cash from food, property, and mature investments is supposed to steady the weak leg of the empire until the cycle turns. In 2025, JG Summit Holdings’ parent company discovered the limits of that idea. The parent collected ₱19.604 billion in dividends in 2025. Under normal circumstances, that would have been the sort of number that justifies a holding-company discount: real cash extracted from a sprawling portfolio, available for debt service, redeployment or distributions to shareholders. But 2025 was not normal. The same parent-company cash-flow statement shows ₱45.633 billion of additional investments in subsidiaries . The dividends were not enough even to cover the cash rescue, much less the parent’s operating cash burn. The parent al...

  For a distributor of spirits, The Keepers Holdings looks surprisingly sober on paper. Sales are rising, cash generation is strong, and, most strikingly, money parked in short-term instruments is already enough to extinguish the group’s entire trade-and-other-payables line. The worry is not solvency. It is margin. In the liquor business, glamour tends to sit on the label while risk lurks in the warehouse. Importers and distributors live with working-capital demands, fickle consumer tastes and the occasional ambush from foreign exchange. The Keepers Holdings, the Philippine drinks distributor behind a portfolio dominated by Alfonso brandy, finished 2025 with none of the harried look that often accompanies growth in consumer goods. Total assets rose to ₱23.26 billion , equity climbed to ₱19.22 billion and total liabilities stood at a modest ₱4.04 billion ; the company’s debt-to-equity ratio was just 0.21 times , while its current ratio remained a lofty 4.48 times . That is the lang...