Voyager faces difficulties finding new investors

MANILA, Philippines — PLDT’s digital innovations arm Voyager Innovations Inc. is facing delays in securing new financial investors to raise fresh funds for the company’s operations over the next few years.

PLDT chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said the search for new financial investors remains in the process as Voyager is finding it harder to get investors in general “because the environment has changed.”

“The tough questions are now being asked as to when will you break even in terms of your EBITDA, in terms of profitability, how sustainable is it and so forth. And these are tough issues so I think the universe has become tougher in terms of their own requirements for a turnaround,” he said.

In an interview last December, Pangilinan said he was expecting to have a better sense of the interest level and how much money to be raised by January.

“The demands for cash are still there as per schedule so we are delayed in terms of getting the final list of investors to agree of the valuations and the amounts they will invest,” he said.

Pangilinan, however, said they are in the final stages of negotiating and agreeing who the final investors would be.

He said Voyager’s existing shareholders in the meantime, would provide the initial funding.

“So we’ve decided in the interim, before they (Voyager) run out of cash, which is probably by the middle of the year, by June, before they hit the wall, that we should provide the interim financing among ourselves,” he said.

“There has been an agreement among the four shareholders of Voyager to provide the initial funding and then let the final investors decide in the next two to three months what sort of investment they’d like to make,” Pangilinan said.

Voyager in late 2018 saw the entry of foreign investors that include global investment firm KKR, China’s Tencent Holdings Inc., and International Finance Corp.

PLDT’s stake in Voyager Innovations fell below 50 percent following the transaction, but remained the company’s largest single shareholder.

With the expected entry of new investors, Pangilinan said earlier that PLDT would try to stay within the 35 percent ownership level.

Voyager is a leading technology company which is behind Paymaya, Smart Padala, FINTQnologies Corp., Lendr and Freenet.

According to Pangilinan, Voyager is expected to break even by 2023.

“I think in terms of positive gross margins, the enterprise part of Voyager will come in positive gross profit first and then the consumer and then come 2023, it will break even totally as a company–break even in EBITDA terms, slightly positive in fact,” he said.

By 2024, Pangilinan said Voyager’s EBITDA is expected to be about P3.6 billion or P3.7 billion.

“Of course we want to see it sooner rather than later. It’s better, but these are the numbers we approved late last year so nothing has changed,” he said.

PayMaya, the financial technology arm of Voyager, has been proving that digital payments experience is better than cash by continuously offering more convenience and better rewards.