Telco one-upmanship

THE STEEP drop in the prices of shares listed on the Philippines Stock Exchange earlier this week caused a lot of teeth gnashing among top-level shareholders of the country’s largest corporations, many of which saw billions of pesos worth of stock value evaporate over the course of two short trading days.

Indeed, no less than the PSE leadership announced that nearly P800 billion in market capitalization was wiped out in the trading day immediately following China’s surprise announcement of a yuan devaluation.

But there was at least one large listed firm that was happy because of the sharp drop in stock prices, and we’re talking about Ayala-controlled Globe Telecom Inc.

Why? That’s because on Aug. 25—when investors were dumping Philippine stocks like crazy—Globe’s stock price closed at P2,450 apiece. Of course, there’s nothing special about that price, per se, until one realizes that the price of PLDT that day ended at P2,430 per share.

People who are watching the cutthroat battle between these two giants will realize that this marks the first time in market history that Globe’s stock price rose higher than that of its larger rival, in peso terms, that is.

Globe’s edge over PLDT continued for another trading day, Aug. 26, with the former’s stock price ending at P2,470 per share, just a few pesos ahead of the latter’s P2,464. (Things had normalized by Thursday with PLDT’s share price recovering to end a few pesos ahead of Globe’s.)

Of course, PLDT is still the larger of the two with a market capitalization of more than P560 billion compared to Globe’s P331 billion, but Globe has the edge this year, as far as investors are concerned.

Since Jan. 1, 2015, Globe’s stock investors have seen their holdings rise by 48 percent—this week’s sharp decline notwithstanding—while PLDT shareholders saw their value of their stocks decline by 7.7 percent during the same period. This is due mainly to the strong income growth that Globe has delivered these last few quarters while PLDT’s has remained flat, for the most part.

Don’t expect this to be the end of the telco wars, however. Both giants have a lot of surprises under their sleeves, and the San Miguel group’s own nascent telco venture has its own surprises to spring, we hear. Abangan. Daxim L. Lucas

Teary eyed

IT’S not often that a CEO of a public company—especially one who isn’t about to retire anytime soon—gets teary-eyed when delivering his management report.

But during the first annual stockholders meeting of DoubleDragon Properties Corp. as a public corporation on Wednesday, young CEO Edgar “Injap” Sia II couldn’t help but become emotional.

His voice cracked and he had to pause several times to regain composure as he thanked his management team, business partners and stakeholders who had supported this company.

Although there was no need for it, he apologized for this show of emotion, which was met with applause from the audience.

“At least you saw the passion in us, the sincerity in us,” he said. Sia said he was “so happy that the picture of DoubleDragon’s vision has become clearer and clearer.” He added that it wasn’t easy to grow a startup enterprise but noted that his team was “ready to take on and all” of the challenges ahead.

Before the meeting started, Sia said he was very nervous. After all, it was his first time to face shareholders as CEO of a publicly listed corporation, one that is now valued by the market at P29.2 billion. From an initial public offering price of P2 per share and its listing in April last year, each DoubleDragon stock is now worth about P13.52.

To date, Double Dragon has acquired more than half of the land inventory needed to build on a chain of 100 community shopping malls under the “CityMall” brand by 2020. It has also entered into new businesses that will provide the cash flow until such time the targeted portfolio would have been built to provide recurring income that would account for 90 percent of the company’s business.

Building a new business in a crowded segment like fast-food or real estate is close to impossible, but Sia, a college dropout from the province, made it happen. In recent years, he had turned a key rival—Jollibee Corp. founder Tony Tan Caktiong—into a formidable partner. All other business partners Sia had only met in the last six to seven years. Outside of DoubleDragon, Sia has investments in hotels and banks.

At 38, Sia is the youngest in Forbes’ latest list of the Philippines’ 50 richest with an estimated net worth of $390 million. He ranked 34th in the list and the only one below the age of 40. Doris Dumlao-Abadilla

BPO play

POINTWEST, a company focusing on high-value IT and business process services, plans to make its debut on the local stock exchange and raise $30 million to $40 million for its expansion, subject to market conditions, of course.

The company, which has estimated earnings of $10 million annually, has two delivery centers servicing the global market: one in Makati, which also serves as its corporate headquarters, and another at the UP-AyalaLand TechnoHub in Quezon City. It has satellite offices in the western and midwestern United States.

Pointwest seeks to ride on the Philippines’ evolution from being a call center destination to a mature location for software services. Doris Dumlao-Abadilla

‘Personal reasons’

WAS he or wasn’t he?

The management of the Philippine Stock Exchange Thursday said the resignation of the chief technology officer of the local bourse—although disclosed shortly after recent trading glitches—had nothing to do with the technical problems that disrupted trading at the bourse recently.

The technology executive, Emmanuel Caintic, resigned from office effective Sept 1.

In an amended disclosure on Thursday, the PSE said Caintic had “cited personal reasons for his resignation expressing his desire to move on to other ventures.”

The resignation of Caintic, who joined the PSE earlier this year, was disclosed on Wednesday, the day the board accepted his resignation.

PSE chief operating officer Roel Refran said Caintic’s resignation was in “no way related to the events in the past days pertaining to the trading halt.”

“We would have wanted for him to continue to help us even in other capacities but we also have to respect his decision. We wish him well and if needed or if there are opportunities in the future, we would welcome tapping his expertise again.” Refran said.

On the technical glitches that resulted in trading halts three times so far this month, the longest of which was on Tuesday (from 10 a.m. to 2:55 p.m.), PSE president Hans Sicat said: “The exchange has put in place measures to restore normal operations in the market. As an exchange operator, it is our goal to ensure the availability of our systems for our stakeholders.” Doris Dumlao-Abadilla

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