TEL enters the back half of May carrying its freshest catalyst in months — a Q1 earnings release that landed on May 14 and told a familiar story: the revenues held up, but the bottom line did not.
The headline print came in with Q1 net income falling 1.77% to PHP 8.87 billion, even as total revenues edged higher year-on-year to roughly USD 959 million. Rising costs were the culprit — the company itself acknowledged they offset the revenue growth. The market's immediate response was measured approval: the stock rose nearly 2% the day earnings hit, adding to a modest 1.1% gain for the week to close at PHP 1,245. That compares to a 3% drag over the past month, so the earnings print has done real work in arresting the near-term slide.
The ownership backdrop adds strategic weight to this print. The shareholder register reads like a consortium rather than a free float — NTT holds 24.3%, First Pacific 13.5%, Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp 12.0%, and JG Summit 11.3%, together controlling well over 60% of the company. That concentration means liquidity is genuinely thin. BlackRock added 204,000 shares through April, and Vanguard added a smaller 52,000 in Q1. Neither move is dramatic, but both point in the same direction: passive and semi-active foreign managers are not retreating. Eaton Vance was the counter — it trimmed 145,000 shares in Q1.
The more immediate corporate story is the Radius Telecoms move. Reports from May 15 indicate PLDT is taking full ownership of the broadband infrastructure play, a signal that management is still in build-out mode on the fiber and fixed-line layer even as wireless margin pressure bites. Q3 results, pencilled in for August 11, are now framed not just by revenue trends but by how quickly that acquisition beds in.
The Street's consensus price target of PHP 1,670 implies roughly 34% upside from current levels — a wide gap that puts the stock deep in value territory by surface measure, with the PE running around 7.3x and EV/EBITDA near 5.4x. Both multiples have edged lower over the past month alongside the price softness. The EPS surprise factor score of 62 suggests PLDT has a modest track record of beating estimates, though not a dominant one. Analyst data is slightly dated — the most recent consensus information is approximately 17 days old — so treat the target as directional rather than current.
What to watch into Q3 is the cost trajectory. Revenue resilience is established; the question that the next print will have to answer is whether PLDT can arrest the margin erosion that turned a stable top-line into a declining bottom-line in Q1 — and whether the Radius Telecoms consolidation adds meaningful EBITDA or merely shifts the pressure around.
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