PSE chief upbeat on capital raising

CAPITAL-RAISING activities in 2025 could more than double from last year's below-target result and also end up substantially higher than what the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) was initially aiming for, the bourse's chief said.

“[J]ust going by capital-raising activities that there are already applications for… we're talking about a target of about P170 billion …,” PSE Inc. President Ramon Monzon said at an investors' day event last Friday.

Despite heightened uncertainties that have battered stock markets worldwide — the benchmark PSE index is down nearly 1 percent since the start of 2025 and is some 2.3 percent lower compared to a year earlier — Monzon said, “we expect this year to be a very, very high capital-raising year, a very successful year for [the] PSE.”

The PSE had targeted P175 billion in capital-raising activities last year, but just P82.37 billion was generated as companies deferred plans to go public amid worries about the impact of a second Donald Trump presidency.

While just three companies conducted initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2024 instead of the six expected, Monzon in November said that he was more focused on overall capital raising as he announced a P120-billion target for 2025. This was, however, lower than the P150 billion he had declared a month earlier.

The PSE chief, who has acknowledged that investor decisions would be influenced by Trump's economic policies, last Friday said that he was banking on nearly P123 billion worth of forthcoming listings to drive a capital-raising surge this year.

The bourse is again aiming for six IPOs this year.

While some analysts have cast doubt on whether this will be achieved given the market volatility caused by the trade wars launched by Trump and his policy flip-flops, China Bank Capital Corp. Managing Director Juan Paolo Colet said that Monzon's capital-raising target is “doable given the current and expected pipeline of equity deals.”

“I think there's a good chance of additional deals that could help the PSE exceed its target,” he added.

Monzon said the bourse “is so far expecting an additional P122.81 billion” from an IPO by Maynilad Water Services, Inc., an ACEN Corp stock rights offering and follow-on offerings of Ayala Corp., Steniel Manufacturing Corp. and Alliance Global Group, Inc.

The amounts involved, respectively, were said to be P45.78 billion, P30 billion, P20 billion, P315 million and P26.71 billion.

The list does not include the expected IPO of Mynt, the operator of GCash — the country's biggest mobile payments service — that could end up the country's biggest after Monde Nissin's 2021 public debut that ended up raising P48.6 billion.

Last month, Globe Telecom Inc. President and CEO Carl Cruz said they were making sure that “all hands are on deck to ensure a successful IPO for GCash.”

Mynt is an affiliate of the telco.

“Nothing has changed on that front. It will be push-button mode very, very soon,” Cruz added, but also said that the telco “wants to ensure the macroeconomic environment when we do the IPO will be very conducive for this particular offering to be the most successful in the Philippine market.”

Given the likely $8-billion valuation of Mynt, Globe has said that it would seek an exemption from the 20-percent minimum public float rule.

Monzon in March said that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had agreed to temporarily lower this to 15 percent for IPOs worth at least P5 billion.

Meanwhile, the IPO plans of Maynilad, a subsidiary of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., are more advanced with the firm earlier this year having filed a listing application with the PSE and a registration statement with the SEC.

The company, which has up to January next year to go public under the terms of its government-issued franchise, said that it was looking to offer up to 2,457,290,000 common shares at a maximum of P20 apiece.

It has targeted an offer period beginning June 25 and a July 10 listing.

Last week, SEC Commissioner McJill Bryant Fernandez told reporters that “we're hoping it really pushes through [in the] middle of the year.”

He also said that the corporate regulator had yet to receive any filings related to a GCash IPO.

To date, just one company has gone public this year: Cebu-based fuel retailer Top Line Business Development Corp., which raised P732.6 million last month. The firm had originally targeted a late-2024 listing until Trump's presidential win forced it to defer the IPO to early 2025.

Top Line followed through with the listing even as markets tumbled and the IPO ended up oversubscribed given investors support. Still, the size of the offering ended up much lower than earlier planned and the P732.6 million raised was substantially lower than the P3.16 billion originally expected.

As of May 14, 2025, capital raising at the PSE has totaled P42.42 billion from the Top Line IPO, one follow-on offering and five private placements.