Megawide confirms route expansion for PITX bus terminal

Megawide [MWIDE 3.42, up 2.4%; 454% avgVol] [link] confirmed a report that its subsidiary, Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange (PITX), is planning to add six bus routes to its 100-route network. MWIDE said that PITX has “already served 127 million passengers from 2019 to 2023”, and it expects PITX to serve its 150 millionth passenger “within the year.” MWIDE added that it expects PITX to serve 40 million passengers in 2024, and that there could be additional routes added to the network beyond the ones confirmed in this report.

MB bottom-line: My focus on my middle-class thesis has somewhat blinded me to non-airline travel data. Ridership is up on public transport in 2023 (MRT-3 saw a 30% increase in trips), and it looks like MWIDE is prepping for a banner year in 2024. If PITX does register 40 million passengers, then it would have exceeded its annual average by 57%. I’ll admit that I’m not familiar with this transportation segment, but these growth numbers might cause me to check it out. Not that there are any “pure bus plays” on the PSE, but still. Income from PITX is part of MWIDE’s “landport operations” segment, which delivered p149 million in revenue in Q3/23, which accounted for about 3.4% of MWIDE’s revenues for that quarter. That’s MWIDE’s second-largest segment after “construction operations”.

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