The Chairman of the PLDT [TEL 1238.00 2.5%; 93% avgVol] board of directors, Manny V. Pangilinan (MVP), said that he’s looking to raise “$100-150 million” [link] to strengthen its integrated money platform, Maya.
MVP said that the raise would happen “on the Voyager level”, and that the raise would focus on “new stockholders” but that “existing stakeholders may have to participate for a portion” due to “market conditions.”
Maya is a subsidiary of Voyager Innovations Inc (Voyager), and TEL (through its subsidiaries) is a significant shareholder in Voyager. MVP also indicated that Voyager is currently negotiating with foreign investors to raise funds.
MB BOTTOM-LINE
GLO and TEL are basically the Coke and Pepsi of our digital telecommunications ecosystem, and that carries through to their respective digital money platforms.
While GLO’s GCash and TEL’s Maya might be somewhat different in terms of what services the platforms offer, their theoretical “optimal user” is nearly the same person.
The money-chasing GCash and Maya is basically the same, too.
Both GCash and Maya have significant American private equity investors, a significant Chinese private equity investor, and the general roadmap to an IPO as a means of generating an eventual exit for those investors.
Given that, it’s not surprising to me to see equity-raising news about GCash (that it’s trying to be “push-button ready” for an IPO by late 2023) prompting equity-raising news out of Maya.
From my perspective, though, I’d rather have had a chance to invest in these technologies earlier.
I don’t want to be catching KKR’s, or Warburg Pincus’s, or Tencent’s, or Ant Financial’s heavy bags.
--