NewsCura

Globe Telecom, Inc.

Disclaimer: The research and recommendation below were generated by Claude Fable. Please treat this as one input for your own research — not as the sole basis for any decision to buy or sell a stock.

Last checked
Price
1870.0000
Trading status
Normal
Recommendation
Hold (GCash IPO partly priced in; core telco shrinking)Hold
Committee call
Hold
Indices
PSEi

Analysis

GLO - Globe Telecom, Inc.

One-line summary: the country's number two mobile operator has fixed its own capex-and-cash-flow problem the same way PLDT did, but the real story right now is that its 33.84% stake in Mynt (GCash) is heading toward an October IPO that could value the stake at nearly as much as Globe's entire current market cap, and a chunk of that story is already priced into the stock.

Snapshot
Reviewed July 19, 2026
Index membership PSEi
Price at review P1,870.00 (July 17, 2026 close, the last trading day before the weekend; up 3.3% from the July 10 review price of P1,810.00)
Recommendation Hold (don't chase the pre-IPO rally; core telco is flat to slightly shrinking and much of the Mynt catalyst is already in the price)
Market cap P267.4B (143M shares)
Trailing P/E ~13.3x
Forward P/E ~12.1x
Dividend P100.00/share TTM (quarterly), ~5.35% yield at P1,870
P/B ~1.34x
Debt D/E ~1.9x TTM (2.21x at FY2025 year-end), telco-normal leverage, but see two fresh 2026 loans (P5B BDO in June, P10B LandBank in July) noted below

Revenue and earnings trend

Revenue: P168.7B (2021), P175.3B (2022), P180.4B (2023), P180.8B (2024), P178.4B (2025), and TTM to Q1 2026 of P177.8B, down 2.18% year over year. Unlike PLDT, which has posted slow but positive revenue growth every year since 2021, Globe's top line has actually rolled over: it peaked in 2024 and has declined for two straight reporting periods since. Management's own 2026 guidance ("low to mid-single-digit growth, likely toward the low end") tacitly concedes this.

Net income is noisier and needs unpacking before it means anything: P23.7B (2021), P34.6B (2022), P24.5B (2023), P24.3B (2024), P23.3B (2025), and TTM P21.8B, down 10.77% year over year. The 2022 spike to P34.6B was not organic. It included a P8.4B one-time net gain from the tower sale-leaseback and a partial data center stake sale; normalized 2022 net income was closer to P20B. The same pattern repeated in 2025, when Globe booked a one-off gain from diluting its stake in Mynt, which is why Q1 2026 net income after tax fell 20% year over year against that easy comp, even as Q1 2026 core net income (which strips these one-offs out) actually rose 9% to P4.9B on stronger EBITDA and affiliate income. The lesson: track Globe's "core net income," not its statutory net income, which swings on equity-stake accounting events that have nothing to do with subscribers or ARPU.

Q1 2026 gross service revenues were up 5% to P42.0B, with mobile data revenue up 11% to P26.8B and 67 million mobile subscribers (+8%), fiber broadband up 6% with 2.2 million subscribers. So the granular subscriber and data metrics are still growing; it's the reported top-line and bottom-line totals that have gone slightly negative, mostly on macro and base-effect noise rather than a structural volume collapse.

On July 8, 2026, Globe launched a commercial Starlink direct-to-cell service, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, letting compatible phones text and call via satellite outside normal coverage. It's a genuine product first and a small incremental revenue stream (P99/30-day add-on for prepaid, bundled for higher postpaid plans), but not large enough on its own to move the revenue trend discussed above.

Mynt (GCash): the stake, the IPO, and what it's actually worth

Globe holds a 33.84% stake in Mynt Inc. (formerly Globe Fintech Innovations), the parent of GCash, making Globe Mynt's single largest shareholder. Ant Group entities hold roughly 32-33% combined, and AM 50 Ventures, Globe/Ayala's joint investment vehicle with Mitsubishi, holds about 13% (giving Ayala Corp., Globe's own parent, an additional ~6.5% indirect exposure to Mynt on top of its direct Globe stake).

Mynt filed for a Philippine Stock Exchange IPO in June 2026, targeting a listing around October 2026 (pricing tentatively September 28, offer period October 5-9, listing October 19, per one report; other coverage cites a broader "October" target). The offering covers up to 9.23 billion shares at a ceiling price of P10.00, which would raise up to P92.3B (~$1.5B) and imply a company valuation of up to P669B, potentially the largest IPO in Philippine history. Most of the shares being sold are secondary (existing stakeholders, mainly Ant-linked entities and private equity/officer holders cashing out a portion), not new primary capital, and Globe has said it is not paring down its own stake in the deal.

Mynt is not a speculative pre-revenue story: it posted P17.2B in net income on P79.8B in revenue in 2025, with 39.1 million monthly active GCash users, and it already contributed 30% of Globe's consolidated pre-tax income in Q1 2026. That is a materially larger and more established contribution than PLDT gets from Maya, its own digital-bank bet: Maya's P1.7B in 2025 net income was roughly 5-6% of PLDT's group net income and only just turned its first profitable year. Mynt is already a proven, sizeable second engine for Globe, not merely evidence one could exist.

The sum-of-the-parts math is the real thesis to weigh here. At the P669B ceiling valuation, Globe's 33.84% stake in Mynt alone would be worth roughly P226B, against Globe's own current market cap of about P267B. Taken at face value, the market is assigning only around P41B to Globe's entire core telecom business (P178B revenue, ~P23B net income, a fiber/mobile network, and a growing tower-lease income stream), which looks too cheap if the Mynt valuation holds. That gap is the bull case in one number. It comes with real caveats, though: P10.00 is a ceiling, not a guaranteed price, the deal isn't priced until late September, fintech IPOs (especially ones this large) can price below the top of their range if institutional demand disappoints, and holding-company stakes routinely trade at a discount to their theoretical market value until the value is actually distributed or the stake is monetized. The stock has already moved on the news once (see the price section below); it's not a secret anymore.

Tower monetization and capex trajectory

Globe has followed the same tower sale-leaseback playbook as PLDT, and at larger scale: since 2022 it has transferred nearly 7,000 towers to MIESCOR Infrastructure Development Corp. (MIDC), PhilTower, and Frontier Tower Associates Philippines, raising a cumulative P89.3B (~$1.5B) in proceeds through 2025 (versus PLDT's 5,907 towers for P77B). The proceeds funded debt reduction and freed cash for the network capex program without new equity or additional borrowing.

Capex has fallen sharply as a result of this program plus the completion of the initial LTE/5G/fiber buildout: P92.8B (2021, 55% of revenue), P98.0B (2022, 56%), P70.5B (2023, 39%), P56.0B (2024, 31%), and P46.1B (2025, 26%). Management's 2026 guidance keeps capex "below $1 billion" (roughly P56B at current exchange rates), which is essentially flat-to-slightly-up from 2025's actual spend rather than a further deep cut, so the biggest gains in free cash flow from capex discipline alone (the 2022-to-2025 move) have likely already been captured; 2026-2027 FCF growth will need to come from EBITDA growth or further asset monetization, not from capex still falling as steeply as it just did. Q1 2026 capex actually came in at P12.7B, up 51% year over year and equal to 30% of service revenue for the quarter, with about 91% of it going to data-related projects; that is a much hotter start than the flat full-year guidance implies, so either spending slows sharply in the back half or the full-year number lands above the "below $1 billion" line management has been repeating.

Globe drew a fresh P5B BDO term loan in mid-2026 to help fund 2026 capex and refinance existing debt, and followed it on July 16, 2026 with a second, larger P10B term loan from Land Bank of the Philippines for the same stated purposes (capex financing, debt refinancing, general corporate requirements). Two new loans totaling P15B in a matter of weeks is more than routine treasury management; it undercuts the "capex discipline is self-funding now" reading of the 2022-2025 tower story and supports the view that at least part of 2026's spending is still being financed with fresh debt rather than purely from the freed-up cash flow.

Dividend sustainability

Globe's dividend policy has been 60-90% of prior year's core net income since the board widened it from a 60-75% band on February 6, 2024 (the 60-75% policy itself had only been in place since November 2018). The wider band gives management room to pay out more in strong years without committing to it. Current TTM dividend is P100.00/share, paid quarterly at P25.00 (ex-dates November 19, 2025; February 16, 2026; May 22, 2026, and a fourth payment completing the TTM total), for a payout ratio of roughly 72% against TTM diluted EPS of P140.58, comfortably inside both the old and new policy bands. Dividends paid have been remarkably stable in absolute terms: P15.0B (2021), P15.8B (2022), P15.8B (2023), P15.9B (2024), P15.9B (2025), which tracks "core" income rather than the noisy statutory net income figure discussed above. Quarterly per-share amounts were higher before 2023 (P27.00/quarter, P108 annualized) and were trimmed to P25.00/quarter (P100 annualized) from 2023 onward even as the payout band was later widened, so the current level reflects a deliberate, conservative payout choice rather than a policy ceiling.

At a ~5.35% yield, Globe pays meaningfully less income than PLDT's 8% yield at its own review price. This is the single biggest quantifiable difference between the two telcos for an income-focused buyer.

ROE

11.69% currently (TTM), 13.59% (2025), 14.82% (2024), 15.73% (2023), 25.93% (2022, inflated by the tower/data-center one-off gains), 24.06% (2021). The trend is a steady decline from the 2021-2022 peak toward a more modest low-teens to low-double-digits level as the one-off gains rolled off and the equity base grew from retained earnings. Debt/equity sits around 1.9-2.2x, telco-normal and lower than PLDT's ~2.8x, so Globe's ROE is somewhat less leverage-flattered than PLDT's, but it is also meaningfully lower in absolute terms.

Free cash flow

Operating cash flow: P65.1B (2021), P65.2B (2022), P80.4B (2023), P84.8B (2024), P79.5B (2025). Capex: P92.8B, P98.0B, P70.5B, P56.0B, P46.1B over the same years. Free cash flow: -P27.6B (2021), -P32.8B (2022), P9.9B (2023), P28.8B (2024), P33.5B (2025). Dividends paid: P15.0B, P15.8B, P15.8B, P15.9B, P15.9B. The turnaround is the same story as PLDT's: capex discipline, not revenue growth, converted deeply negative free cash flow into free cash flow that covers the dividend roughly 2.1x over by 2025, slightly better coverage than PLDT's 1.7x. The risk flagged above (capex is no longer falling as steeply) means this FCF cushion is unlikely to keep expanding at the same pace it did from 2022 to 2025.

Capital allocation

Globe is controlled by Asiacom Philippines, Inc., the Ayala-SingTel joint venture, which holds 52.32% of total equity; SingTel holds 22.24% directly, Ayala Corporation 14.61% directly, with the remaining roughly 10.4% in public float. Foreign ownership sits at about 25.4% of the 40% constitutional cap for public utilities. Capital allocation over the past several years has followed a clear pattern: sell towers to raise cash and delever, cut capex hard once the network buildout matured, hold the regular dividend steady rather than aggressively growing it, and let Mynt/GCash develop as an internally funded, increasingly profitable growth bet that is now large enough to be taken to market via IPO. There is no buyback program of note. The upcoming Mynt listing is best read as a liquidity and price-discovery event for an asset Globe already owns and isn't selling down, not a divestment; whatever cash flows to Globe from it (if any, since most of the offering is secondary shares from other holders) would be incremental to the picture above.

One overhang worth flagging that this page hasn't previously carried: the Konektadong Pinoy Act (Open Access in Data Transmission Act), which lapsed into law in August 2025, removes the legislative-franchise requirement for new internet service providers and forces incumbents like Globe and PLDT to open parts of their infrastructure to third parties. Both telcos have publicly opposed it on competitive and security grounds, and it was cited by at least one sell-side downgrade (UBS, to Neutral) as an earnings-risk factor earlier in 2026. The implementing rules are still not fully settled, so the actual margin impact is unquantified; treat this as a standing regulatory risk to the core telco business, layered on top of (and separate from) the Mynt IPO catalyst.

Verdict at P1,870.00 (July 19, 2026)

Hold, unchanged from the July 12 review. No buy or sell trigger has fired in the week since: the Mynt IPO is still tracking toward its Q4 2026 window (offer period pencilled in for October 5-9, listing around October 19), core telco data hasn't updated since Q1 (Globe doesn't appear to have set a Q2 2026 earnings date yet), the dividend run rate is unchanged, and the below-$1-billion capex guidance hasn't been walked back, so none of the stated triggers apply. What did happen this week is the stock continuing its choppy climb back toward the post-Mynt-news peak: P1,810 (July 10) to P1,849 (July 13) to a dip at P1,796 (July 14) and P1,804 (July 15), then P1,824 (July 16) and P1,870 (July 17, +2.52% on the day), which puts it back within about P55 of the June 29 peak of P1,925. There was no single stock-specific catalyst behind the July 17 pop that turned up in the press; the more concrete news of the week was Globe drawing a second large 2026 loan (P10B from LandBank, on top of the P5B BDO facility from June), and Q1 capex running 51% above last year's pace even as full-year guidance stays flat. Both cut against the "capex discipline is now self-funding" read of the story and reinforce that some of 2026's spending is still debt-financed.

The core thesis hasn't changed: the capex-and-cash-flow turnaround is real and slightly better executed than PLDT's own version of the same playbook, and the Mynt stake is a genuinely valuable, already-profitable asset that could be worth close to what the whole of Globe is currently priced at. The reason to hold rather than buy is still timing and price. The market priced in a big chunk of the Mynt catalyst back in late June (the stock jumped 6.94% to P1,925 on June 29 when the IPO prospectus details broke), and at P1,870 it is still trading closer to that post-news peak than to its pre-news level, with the actual pricing event still roughly ten weeks away. Globe's trailing P/E of ~13.3x and forward P/E of ~12.1x are meaningfully richer than PLDT's, and the ~5.35% dividend yield is well below PLDT's ~8%. There is also now a standing regulatory overhang (the Konektadong Pinoy Act) that this page hadn't previously flagged; it doesn't change the call today since the implementing rules are unsettled, but it argues against paying up further for the core telco business while that uncertainty is unresolved.

What would change the call:

  • Buy trigger (add to a position): Mynt actually prices at or near the top of its indicated range (validating the P669B-ish valuation and the sum-of-parts gap), or the stock pulls back toward the P1,650-1,700 range (yield back near 6%) while the IPO thesis stays intact, or core telco revenue returns to positive growth for two consecutive quarters.
  • Sell trigger (if owned): the Mynt IPO is priced well below the ceiling, postponed, or pulled entirely, core telco revenue keeps contracting for multiple additional quarters, the regular dividend is cut below the current P100/share run rate, capex guidance is walked back upward unexpectedly, full-year 2026 capex actually lands materially above the "below $1 billion" guidance given Q1's 51% year-over-year run rate, or the Konektadong Pinoy Act's implementing rules land in a way that clearly compresses Globe's margins.

Analysis, not financial advice.

Committee review (July 19, 2026)

Five investor lenses judged this page's refreshed facts independently (each fed only the numbers above, no cross-talk between lenses):

Lens Signal Confidence Core argument
Ben Graham Neutral 52 Graham's P/E x P/B screen still passes but with less room: 13.3 x 1.34 = 17.82, up from 16.77 last week as the price ran to P1,870. The dividend is still covered at a ~72% payout. But conservative-financing still fails: D/E of 1.9-2.21x was already above what he'd accept, and Globe has since drawn two more loans in 2026 (P5B BDO, P10B LandBank), adding fresh debt on top of a declining ROE trend (24.06% in 2021 to 11.69% TTM). A rising price against unchanged fundamentals and rising leverage shrinks the margin of safety, not widens it.
Warren Buffett Neutral 53 Nothing in the ROE decline (24.06% to 11.69% TTM) has reversed, and the two new 2026 loans (P15B combined) work against the "owner earnings funded internally" read of the tower story. The newly flagged Konektadong Pinoy Act is directly relevant to Buffett's moat test: forced infrastructure-sharing and easier market entry for new ISPs is exactly the kind of regulatory change that erodes a durable competitive advantage, and it's unresolved. The Mynt stake remains real value, but it's optionality, not the understandable, moat-protected earner Buffett wants to own at a richer multiple.
Michael Burry Bearish 68 The "capex discipline is self-funding" story just got harder to defend: Q1 2026 capex ran P12.7B, up 51% year over year against flat full-year guidance, and Globe drew a second loan (P10B LandBank, July 16) on top of the P5B BDO facility from June, P15B of fresh debt in a matter of weeks. That's confirmation, not speculation, that some of 2026's spend is debt-financed even as management keeps repeating the "below $1 billion" line. The Mynt stake is real, but it's an unpriced ceiling value, mostly secondary shares, still roughly ten weeks from actually pricing, while the stock has already run back to within P55 of its post-news peak; Burry wouldn't chase the last leg of a re-rate that's priced in the good outcome and ignored the borrowing.
Nassim Taleb Bearish 64 Fragility keeps compounding rather than resolving: two fresh loans totaling P15B this year, Q1 capex up 51% year over year against guidance that assumes it won't be, and now a live regulatory tail risk (Konektadong Pinoy) with unsettled implementing rules sitting on top of the balance-sheet picture. None of this is antifragile optionality; it's negative convexity dressed up as "discipline." The Mynt stake is real convexity, but the sellers in the IPO are Ant Group insiders cashing out secondary shares, not the controlling Ayala-SingTel holder adding, still a skin-in-the-game red flag against the bull case.
Stanley Druckenmiller Bullish 62 The dated catalyst is intact and unchanged: Mynt pricing around September 28, listing around October 19, roughly ten weeks out. At the P669B ceiling valuation, Globe's Mynt stake (~P226B) is close to Globe's entire ~P267B market cap, implying the core telecom business is priced at only ~P41B. The stock has clawed back most of its post-news pullback (P1,810 to P1,870 this week, within P55 of the June 29 peak of P1,925), which is constructive price action into the catalyst, though it also means less of the asymmetric discount is left to capture than there was a week ago.

Conferred call: Hold (1 bullish, 2 neutral, 2 bearish). This matches the page's own Recommendation, and the balance shifted one notch more cautious than the July 12 committee (which was 1 bullish, 2 neutral, 1 bearish, 1 neutral-leaning-bearish) as Taleb's stance hardened from neutral-leaning-bearish to outright bearish on the new debt and Q1 capex data. Checked against Brain/concepts/stock-trading-strategy-and-rules.md: there is still a real, dated catalyst (Mynt pricing September 28), but the rulebook favors setups combining a catalyst with earnings momentum, and the core telco's own numbers (rising capex, fresh debt, unresolved regulatory risk) are working against that momentum rather than confirming it, consistent with Hold rather than Buy.

Shared flip trigger: Three lenses (Burry, Taleb, Druckenmiller) converge on the same date: how Mynt actually prices relative to the P10.00/P669B ceiling on or around September 28, 2026. Pricing near the ceiling flips Burry and Taleb toward bullish and confirms Druckenmiller's catalyst thesis; pricing well below it (or a delay) flips Druckenmiller bearish and reinforces Burry's and Taleb's skepticism.

Review history

Date Price Recommendation
July 10, 2026 1,810.00 Hold (don't chase the pre-IPO rally; wait for Mynt to actually price)
July 12, 2026 1,810.00 Hold (unchanged; corrected the page's internal price inconsistency to match the verified July 10 close; committee run for the first time, conferred Hold)
July 19, 2026 1,870.00 Hold (unchanged; stock recovered toward its post-Mynt-news peak; flagged a second 2026 loan draw (P10B LandBank) and Q1 capex up 51% YoY, plus the previously unflagged Konektadong Pinoy Act regulatory overhang; committee re-run, still conferred Hold but tilted one notch more bearish as Taleb moved from neutral-leaning-bearish to outright bearish)

Sources