Meralco prices slightly up this August
MANILA, Philippines — The Manila Electric Company is set to slightly hike power rates this August, from P11.6012 per Kilowatthour in July to P11.6339 per kWh this month.
UPS latest news
Asian golf stars qualify for FedExCup Playoffs
A total of five Asian golf stars, headed by Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama and Korea’s Sungjae Im, have qualified for the lucrative FedExCup Playoffs, which begin with the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis on Thursday.
‘Boba, stupida, pangit’: Dolly de Leon, Lea Salonga reveal ‘traumatic’ experiences in theater
MANILA, Philippines — “Boba, torta, stupida, gaga, tanga, pangit” — these were some of the bad words Dolly de Leon had to swallow like a bitter pill in years leading to her becoming the first Filipino to get a Golden Globe and British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) nomination.
The week ahead
> PH: The scheduled items start on Tuesday with the suspension of the Cirtek Warrants (TECHW). They’re worthless and will be delisted on August 19. After that, we get the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) decision on interest rates on Thursday. Lots of briefings and quarterly reports coming out, so there are bound to be some interesting developments that tumble out of those news items.> International: We’ll get the US CPI data for July on Thursday, and then on Friday we’ll get the updated jobless claims data. MB BOTTOM-LINE: This is the last week of full trading before we get two consecutive weeks that are interrupted by non-trading holidays. So far, this hasn’t been the kind of Deep Aughost that the oldheads keep talking about. The PSEi is up 29 points. That’s not a big deal but it’s better than a loss. The bigger deal to me is that the value turnover (~P5 billion) has been basically the same (on average) through the first seven days of trading in August as it was through all of July. The market wasn’t doing the best before Aughost, but at least it didn’t get worse. I don’t expect that to carry through those last two weeks, though.
CREIT declares stable Q2 dividend
Citicore Renewable Energy REIT [CREIT 2.89 ?0.7%; 44% avgVol] [link] declared a Q2/24 dividend of P0.049/share, payable on October 4 to shareholders of record as of September 10. The dividend maintains CREIT’s annualized yield of 6.78% based on the previous closing price. The total amount of the dividend is P321 million, which is 107% of the P300 million in distributable income that CREIT reported for the quarter. Relative to CREIT's IPO price, the dividend increased CREIT's total stock and dividend return to 33.53%, up from its pre-dividend total return of 31.61%. CREIT’s stock price is up 12.9% year-to-date. It has a TTM yield of 6.96%, and an estimated yield of 6.78%.MB BOTTOM-LINE: CREIT doesn’t always get the credit that it deserves for its stability and performance. PREIT’s odd performance aside (it’s up 11.8% since its December 2022 IPO), CREIT has been the top performer (+7.0%) in the REIT space since the onset of the inflationary plague that knee-capped even top-shelf REITs like AREIT (down 22.1%) and RCR (down 25.0%), and contributed to the declines in some of the bottom-shelf REITs like DDMPR (down 42.4%) and FILRT (down 58.2%). CREIT is immune to the POGO Problem (it doesn’t lease commercial office space), always has 100% occupancy, and has the best-developed asset injection ecosystem of anything on the market right now. Sure, something like AREIT has a deeper stable of potential injections, but nobody has a longer, more detailed plan than that which exists between CREIT and its parent, Citicore Renewable Energy [CREC 2.98 ?2.4%; 49% avgVol]. The pair have delivered multiple injections already, and (re)revealed their long-term roadmap through CREC’s prospectus. Does the distribution ratio look odd? You bet. But I’m working on an in-depth explainer with CREIT right now that I hope to publish in the coming days, so stay tuned!
Magical Malixi cements status as a rising golf star, wins US Women's Amateur
MANILA, Philippines – Rianne Malixi continued to carve her name in the annals of women’s amateur golf by winning the prestigious US Women’s Amateur in Oklahoma, on Sunday (Monday Manila time). At just 17, Malixi became only the second player to claim two USGA championships in a single season, following her historic triumph in the US Girls’ Junior last month.
Philippine Airlines Q2 profit: P2.6B (down 67%)
Philippine Airlines [PAL 5.20 ?1.2%; 12% avgVol] [link] reported a Q2 net income of P2.6 billion, down 67% y/y from its Q2/23 net income of P7.9 billion, and down 43% q/q from its Q1/24 net income of P4.6 billion. Q2 revenue was P45.1 billion (down 0.2% y/y). H1 revenue was P90.9 billion (up 4% y/y) on 7.91 million passengers (up 12.5% y/y). PAL’s consolidated operating expenses increased by 15% to P10.45 billion, which PAL attributed to an 11.43% increase in flights. Flight expenses increased 13% as a downstream consequence of PAL’s increased flying schedule, with fuel consumption up 7% and maintenance up 16%. In an associated press release, PAL referred to its Q2 and H1 results as “on track in its transformative growth strategy” to make PAL “more efficient” while also being its “only full-service airline” and the airline with the “biggest network.” PAL’s stock is up 0.4% year-to-date, is flat over the trailing 12 months, and is down 13% from its March 2020 COVID-crash low. The stock price has been in a downtrend since March 2012 when shares peaked at around P18.00/share.MB BOTTOM-LINE: PAL’s Achilles' heel has always been efficiency, and while the new group has been doing much better than the old group since the airline emerged from bankruptcy, some of the airline’s old ways of thinking appear to be seeping back into management’s commentary. The President and COO of PAL, Lucio Tan III (LT3), said that their growth strategy is to be efficient, but also full-service, and also the largest. Not all of these points are in conflict per se, but they can certainly be in tension depending on how this growth strategy is executed. Did PAL learn vital lessons from the pandemic and its unsurprising bankruptcy? The initial returns were promising from a business perspective, but shareholders have yet to be rewarded. How quickly will the parasites reattach themselves to the income stream? Will hubris and legacy concerns pilot major decisions, or data and cutthroat strategy? This is the first result that has given me flashbacks.
Frayna, Fronda brace for Olympiad
MANILA, Philippines — Janelle Mae Frayna and Jan Jodilyn Fronda showed their readiness to lead the Philippine women’s team in next month’s FIDE World Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary after strong finishes in a recent tournament in Vlissingen, The Netherlands.