Happy Wednesday, Barkada --
The PSE lost 5 points to 6848 ▼0.1%
Shout-out to
CHARToons for being old enough to remember some 90s stuff with me, to
Jing for appreciating PAL's restraint, and to
arkitrader for feeling my "only Tuesday?" mood.
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- DigiPlus FY23 profit: P4.1-B (up 596%)
- CREIT declares record Q4 dividend
- San Miguel to scrap P100-B Pasig tollway?
▌Main stories covered:
- [EARNINGS] DigiPlus revenues and profits exploded in FY23... DigiPlus [PLUS 10.00 ▲0.2%] declared a cash dividend of ₱0.18/share (1.8% yield) and teased that its FY23 net income of ₱4.1 billion, an outrageous 596% increase over its FY22 net income. PLUS said the massive increase was made possible by the “sustained growth of its digital retail segment”, which was fueled by “the introduction of new platforms” and “cost-savings efficiencies”. FY23 revenues increased 306% to ₱27.3 billion thanks to “higher user traffic” on its BingoPlus and ArenaPlus platforms and from contributions from “new digital offerings”. PLUS is up 24% year-to-date, and is up 283% over the past 12 months.
- MB: The stock (and company) has gone on an absolute rip since it rebranded (it used to be Leisure and Resorts World Corp) and leaned heavily into online gaming. It used to specialize in operating junkets to physical casino locations, but it acquired a license from PAGCOR to facilitate gaming operations for e-casinos and sportsbetting, and pushed heavily into e-bingo and online slot betting. What makes PLUS particularly interesting is that it doesn’t need to spend billions to build a new casino to double its income like the other gaming companies do. It doesn’t have to site land, prep the parcel, construct the building, hire the staff, and all of that fun stuff particular to our lives in meatspace. It just makes a betting version of a boomer phone game and pushes that out for people to play at home. It could double its customers through word-of-mouth and marketing without having to spend any capex to facilitate that growth.
- [DIVS] Citicore Energy REIT declares robust Q4 dividend... Citicore Energy REIT [CREIT 2.75 ▲3.8%], the subsidiary of Citicore Renewable Energy Corporation and the REIT arm of the Megawide [MWIDE 3.08 ▲0.0%; NaN% avgVol] group of companies, declared a Q4/23 dividend of ₱0.054/share, payable on May 15 to shareholders of record as of April 18. The dividend has an annualized yield of 7.85% (up from 7.38%) based on the previous day’s closing price. The total amount of the dividend is ₱353 million, which is 106% of the ₱334 million in reported Q4 distributed income. Relative to CREIT’s IPO price, the dividend increased CREIT’s total stock and dividend return to 24.2%, up from its pre-dividend return of 22.08%.
- MB: CREIT’s full FY23 of declared dividends is 9% higher than what it distributed in FY22. The Q4 dividend is the company’s highest on record, but it’s a combination of CREIT’s regular Q4 dividend and the full-year distributable income from its variable lease agreements. Last year, CREIT distributed the variable lease income in a special dividend that was declared on the same day as the Q4 dividend; this year, it looks like they’ve combined the two. So while this might be a record declaration, it’s a record that deserves an asterisk and a little bit of special treatment. As far as I can figure, the annualized yield is a little bit misleading since the Q1 through Q3 dividends in 2024 won’t come with any of that variable lease income sweetener baked in.
- [UPDATE] San Miguel to scrap ₱100-B Pasig River tollway?... San Miguel [SMC 101.40 ▼1.6%] clarified a report that it planned to scrap its ₱100 billion Pasig River tollway project, saying that it “contemplates not to proceed with [the project]”, and that it is “evaluating the financial and technical viability of the construction of [the project]”. SMC said that this is in response to the “prevailing sentiment expressed by the public on the Project”.
- MB: First things first, “contemplates not to proceed” doesn’t read to me as though SMC considers this project dead. To me, the statement reads as though SMC is now considering the fact that the public generally hates the plan as just one of several factors, but has yet to fully recompute with the sentiment factor included. Based on Ramon Ang’s quote, he understands that people think the proposed elevated skyway along the river “looks bad”, and while he says that he’s “very sensitive to the opinion of the public”, that’s not in perfect alignment with what this clarification is saying. Either SMC thesaurused itself into saying something it didn’t mean to say, or the clarification trying to walk back Mr. Ang’s statements as lightly as it can.
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