PLDT Inc. (TEL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to PLDT's First Quarter 2026 Financial and Operating Results. My name is Jinggay Nograles. I'm the Head of Investor Relations here at PLDT, and it's my pleasure to welcome you this afternoon. So joining us today to share insights into PLDT's performance and strategic direction are PLDT's Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Danny Yu; PLDT's Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Butch Jimenez, Jr.; PLDT Chief Legal Counsel, Attorney Joan De Venecia-Fabul; SVP and Head of Consumer Business Home, Mr. John Palanca; SVP and Head of Enterprise Business Group, Mr. Blums Pineda; Smart Communications Officers In Charge, Mr. Lloyd Manaloto; and I think later -- Marjorie is just joining us as well. And I think perhaps later, we'll be joined by some other key PLDT officers as well. So before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that we have a Q&A session later in the presentation. So you can definitely submit your questions via the MS Teams Q&A panel. You can also send those to me on my phone if you prefer that way. So to start, I'd like to invite our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Danny Yu, and he will walk us through PLDT's financial performance.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Please allow me to present PLDT's financial and operating highlights for the first quarter of 2026. Our gross service revenues were PHP 54.9 billion, up 3% or PHP 1.5 billion year-on-year. Our net service revenue were stable at PHP 48.9 billion. The top line was held back by temporary factors. For home, a system migration from a legacy platform affected activations and installs. For wireless, revenues were weighed down by lower mobility and pressured consumer wallets brought about by soaring fuel prices. Despite this, EBITDA improved 2% to PHP 28.3 billion. EBITDA margin was steady at 52%, supported by our focus on cost control as cash -- subsidies and applications came down by PHP 0.5 billion or 2%. Telco core income was PHP 8.6 billion, down 2%, mainly due to higher depreciation. Net financing costs were kept steady as we successfully negotiated better rates with our creditors. Core income improved 2% to PHP 9.1 billion, supported by Maya's continued profitability and asset sales. Overall, first quarter was softer, mainly due to the temporary impact of home operational support migration and Middle East related pressure on consumer wallets. Some wallet pressure may carry into the second quarter as prices remain elevated. Home orders on the other hand, that install are now normalizing. We remain focused on stabilizing install, continued monetization in our wireless segment and sustained growth in our enterprise while keeping tight control on costs. While net service revenues were flat in the first quarter, revenues, excluding legacy services grew 2% to PHP 44.6 billion. These growing segments now account for 91% of our total service revenues. Mobile data and fixed wireless remained positive, up 1%. However, this was offset by the continued decline in legacy services such as voice and SMS. As a result, wireless consumer revenues came in at PHP 21 billion, down 1% year-on-year. Home revenues were PHP 15 billion, down 1% year-on-year. Fiber revenues were broadly flat at PHP 14.7 billion as installs were temporarily constrained during the quarter. More on this later. More importantly, customer demand remained healthy with orders at pre-migration levels. Enterprise was the bright spot for the first quarter as revenues grew by 4% to PHP 12.4 billion, driven by corporate data, ICT and A2P. Overall, the growth areas of the business remain intact. Let's take a closer look at each of the business segments. Enterprise were our main growth driver this quarter. Enterprise revenues reached PHP 12.4 billion, up 4% year-on-year. Corporate data and ICT, which includes A2P or application to person grew 5% to PHP 9.3 billion and now accounts for 75% of the enterprise revenues. Growth was led by areas where we have been investing and building scale. ICT revenues, which include data centers were up 17%, but if you look at the tech services on its own, revenue grew even faster at 25%. This is an important part of the story because it shows strong demand for high-value solutions such as managed IT, cloud, cybersecurity, data and AI. We also saw growth in SD-WAN lines, fiber lines and third-party racks. A key driver for this success is our one enterprise model. PLDT has the largest enterprise footprint in the country with many of our client relationships starting from connectivity. We are now modernizing the base, though high-value solutions like SD-WAN. Simply put, SD-WAN helps clients manage their network across many branches and site through one platform with better control, security and reliability. From there, we're also bringing more services across cloud, data center, A2P, Bizloads and global services. Biz helped us deepen client relationship and move the business beyond basic connectivity. We also had good wins during the quarter, including government contracts, cloud productivity deals and international connectivity accounts. This helped offset the continued decline in legacy services. Overall, enterprise continued to show good momentum where demand is moving increasingly towards solutions that help clients digitize, automate, improve security and manage cost. To give more color on enterprise, we would like to show where the growth is coming from across the group. First is PLDT Global or international connectivity business. PLDT Global supports hyperscalers, carriers, enterprises that need secure and reliable links between the Philippines and the overseas market. Revenues grew 26%, driven by demand for high-capacity IPLC, strategic connectivity and carrier-grade colocation. Our wireless arm Smart Enterprise is also showing promise. Smart supports corporate and public sector clients through mobile connectivity, A2P messaging, IoT and load disbursement platforms. Revenues grew 13%, driven by higher A2P SMS traffic, mobile load disbursement and the Bayanihan SIM program, which supports digital inclusion for Filipinos. These are recurring enterprise use cases from customer alerts and authentication to workforce mobility and workload distribution. One of our fastest-growing subs is PLDT, rather ePLDT, our ICT solutions business. ePLDT supports enterprises and government clients across managed IT, cloud, cybersecurity, data and AI. ePLDT's tech service revenues grew 34%, supported by steady demand from both private and public sector clients. These solutions help organizations improve efficiency, strengthen security and modernize their operations. Finally, VITRO, our data center business. It is a pioneer and the leading data center provider in the Philippines. Revenues grew 10%, driven by enterprise and hyperscale workloads. In the first quarter alone, VITRO contracted 254 new racks and 680 kilowatts of incremental. Overall, this shows that the enterprise growth is coming from several areas, including international connectivity, wireless enterprise solutions, ICT and data centers. This gives us a broader base for growth beyond traditional connectivity. Now let me now move to home. Home revenues were PHP 15 billion, down 1% year-on-year. Fiber revenues were broadly stable at PHP 14.7 billion and now account for 98% of home revenues. While the headline number was soft, the underlying demand remained strong. More specifically, order pipeline remained healthy. The constraint was not in customer interest, but in converting those orders into completed installs. This was due to the migration from our 21-year legacy OSS system. This system was outdated and fragmented, and we needed to move to a more modern platform that can support a better digital customer journey, better order flow and future AI-enabled capabilities. However, during the migration period, account installations and activation slowed, impacting fiber net adds. While churn remained low, we ended the quarter with 44,000 fiber net adds lower than the previous quarters due to bottleneck. ARPU was also affected by 2 short-term factors. First, we extended temporary payment relief to subscribers affected by typhoons. This was part of our support for customers who needed time to get back on their feet. Most of these customers were recovered, which helped preserve the base, but it weighed on ARPU in the short term. Second, the migration slowed some of the higher-value fiber installs. At the same time, prepaid fiber continued to grow because it was easier to activate during the period. This created a temporary customer mix impact on ARPU. The important point is that the business fundamentals remain sound and the demand remains healthy. We are also seeing stabilization in the second quarter as install conversion improves. The focus is now to bring installation throughput back to normal levels and rebuild home fiber momentum from the second quarter onwards. For home, we continue to focus on improving the customer experience. We are pleased to see that our NPS score improved by 12 points in 2025. NPS measures how likely customers are to recommend PLDT. It also looks at the key factors behind that rating, including how important each factor is to customers and how well we perform on each one. The good news is that PLDT scores improve in the areas that matter most to home subscribers, network reliability, broadband quality and value. On network reliability, customers are seeing more stable connectivity, more consistent speeds and fewer slowdown issues. This was supported by around PHP 3 billion in broadband capacity investments last year across peering, backbone and caching. Network slowdown tickets were also down 38% in 2025. We also saw better feedback on the day-to-day broadband experience, including streaming, loading and take time performance on product offers. We continue to strengthen value through bundles, which customers recognize as a key advantage of PLDT Home. PLDT has been the first to market on several relevant bundles, including Netflix, HBO, IoT and PC gaming. This helped us improve value perception without relying on price cuts. Taken together, these improvements strengthen the whole value proposition as it helps improve customer stickiness reduce churn risk and create more room to upsell over time. Now let's now move to wireless consumer. While total wireless consumer revenues were down 1% to PHP 21 billion, the core data business remained resilient. Data revenues, including fixed wireless grew 1% to PHP 19.4 billion and now account for 92% of wireless consumer revenues. Active data users reached 44.1 million. Wireless data traffic, including fixed wireless rose 10%. 5G individual devices grew 34% to PHP 12.2 million and now making up 20% of the device base. The softness was mainly in revenue contracts. With higher fuel prices, lower mobility and tighter consumer wallets, subscribers became more careful with their daily spending. Many also stayed home more and shifted part of their usage to Wi-Fi. So while subscriber remain connected, some top up less than often by stretching their current offers. Fixed wireless remained a bright spot with revenues up 18%, supported by stay-at-home data demand. To address the pressure, we're managing the base in a more targeted way. We're using hyper-personalized offers to match the right offer to the right subscriber. For some users, this means keeping them active with more affordable offers. For others, it means moving them to high-value offers where they get the capacity to pay. We're also using dynamic pricing to improve monetization. Lastly, 5G adoption continues to move up as more customers move to 5G, they tend to use more data and take up bigger offers. This also helps improve experience across both 5G and LTE. Overall, wireless was affected by wallet pressure in the third quarter rather in the first quarter, but the subscriber base remains intact. Data usage continued to grow and we're taking a more targeted approach to monetization. Let me now move to operating expenses. Total cash expenses, subsidies and provisions came down to PHP 20.6 billion, lower by PHP 0.5 billion or 2% year-on-year. Compensation and benefits were down 4%, supported by workforce productivity efforts. Selling and promo were also lower, down 9%. Taxes and licenses were also down 23%. Repairs and maintenance were broadly stable, down 1%. These savings more than offset the increase in contract-specific service costs. That increase was tied mainly to growth areas, including ICT projects, cloud, data center and content costs. We're keeping a tight grip on OpEx while still supporting the areas that drive growth and service quality. For the first quarter of 2026, EBITDA, excluding MRP reached PHP 28.3 billion in the first quarter, up 2% year-on-year. EBITDA margin remained steady at 52%. This was achieved despite flat service revenues, mainly because of lower cash expenses. Telco core income was at PHP 8.6 billion, down 2% year-on-year. The decline was mainly due to higher depreciation as we continue to invest in the network and infra. This was partly offset by Maya's continued contribution. Maya contributed PHP 285 million to PLDT's core income in the first quarter. We also booked PHP 0.3 billion from property sales. This is part of our broader asset monetization program as we continue to unlock values from our non-core assets. As a result, core income improved to PHP 9.1 billion, up 2% year-on-year. Reported income was PHP 8.9 billion, down 2%. This reflects unrealized ForEx losses and MRP costs. Overall, while the Telco core was slightly lower, group core income improved, supported by Maya and asset monetization. Let me now move to CapEx and free cash flow. CapEx for the first quarter was PHP 10 billion, lower than PHP 10.8 billion last year. CapEx intensity continued to come down from 20% in the first quarter last year to 18% this quarter. This reflects our continued focus on discipline and better pricing and terms. At the same time, we continue to invest in the areas that matter for growth and service quality. These include new cell sites, home fiber ports, AI, submarine cables, data centers and network and IT upgrades. EBITDA less CapEx improved to PHP 18.3 billion from PHP 17 billion last year. We remain focused on sustaining positive free cash flow while bringing CapEx intensity down over time. For 2026, our guidance remains in the mid PHP 50 billion range. Let me now move to our debt profile. I'll start with a key point. PLDT sustained positive free cash flow as of the end of March. Net debt was PHP 282.3 billion, while net debt to EBITDA was at 2.53x slightly better than 2.56x in December 2025. Gross debt was PHP 297.3 billion and our maturity profile remains long dated with 50% of our maturities are post 2031. This keeps near-term refinancing needs manageable. Interest cover remains healthy at 3.3x. Average interest cost improved to 5.08% from 5.43% as of end of '25. This reflects the work that we have done with our banks to negotiate more favorable funding terms, which resulted in keeping net financing costs flat year-on-year. Our debt mix remained balanced with 32% fixed rate loans and 68% floating -- rather floating rate loans. We also continue to maintain our investment-grade ratings from both S&P Global and Moody's. Looking ahead, our focus is to maintain positive free cash flow in 2026 and work towards around 2.0x net debt to EBITDA, supported by our asset monetization plans. In the first quarter of 2026, Maya, the Philippines' leading digital financial services platform sustained its growth and profitability. Its integrated payments and digital banking platform helps consumers manage their finances. It also gives business tools to improve cash flow and access financing. This supports Maya's position as the country's leading digital bank and merchant acquirer. During the quarter, Maya continues to enhance its banking, credit and payment suite using its proprietary data-led underwriting platform. By end of March 2026, Maya's deposit increased 73% year-on-year to PHP 76 billion. Its loan portfolio reached PHP 33 billion, driven by growth across multiple credit products. Demand and adoption stayed across consumer and enterprise segments, including merchant scaling through Maya Business for integrated payment acceptance, business deposits and credit solutions. Results were driven by Maya's proprietary technology platform and AI capabilities. On the funding side, Maya Savings, Maya Personal Goals, Maya Time Deposit Plus, continue to attract customers with competitive rates. In the first quarter of '26, Maya accelerated credit growth across easy credit, personal loans, Maya bank and Landers credit cards and SME loans. Asset quality remained stable with an NPL ratio of 4.9%. Maya delivered a net interest margin of 17.1%, underscoring strong lending margins. Maya's momentum continues to earn industry recognition, including Neobank of the Year, Best Digital Fraud Protection Experience at The Asset Triple A Awards as well as inclusion in Forbes' Worlds' Best Bank of 2026. Beyond financial results, Maya broadened partnerships to advance financial inclusion. Through its collaboration with the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines, Maya is extending digital banking credit access to 1.9 billion digital workers, helping build formal credit histories and enhancing payroll and disbursement processes for participating. After PLDT's inclusion in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook for '25 and 2026, PLDT was also apprised of its inclusion in the universe of eligible companies for potential inclusion in the Dow Jones Best-in-class Index. While the company was not included in the final list of constituents, PLDT remains focused on embedding sustainability in the business and advancing its environmental, social and governance commitments. PLDT remained active in the broader sustainability community in the pursuit of shared goals. The group's program on digital farmers and innovation in agriculture were also featured in international events. Other examples of embedding sustainability in the business are the solarization of lease cell sites, which meet our triple goals of cost savings, service reliability and decarbonization. Combating cybercrimes and online harms remain a priority and are part of our keeping our customers safe online. Finally, we are able to use our e-waste program in marketing, particularly for younger markets. So that concludes our prepared remarks for PLDT's first quarter results. We are now open for questions.

Thank you, Danny, for the insights on our growth initiatives and key developments across our business units. Before we open the floor to your questions, allow me to reintroduce the business leaders in the room who can also help you with your queries. And we have PLDT's CFO, Mr. Danny Yu; PLDT's Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Butch Jimenez, Jr.; Chief Legal Counsel, Attorney Joan De Venecia-Fabul; SVP and Head of Consumer Business Home, Mr. John Palanca; SVP and Head of Enterprise Business, Mr. Blums Pineda; and our Smart Communications Officers In Charge, Ms. Marjorie Garrovillo and Mr. Lloyd Manaloto. Okay. [Operator Instructions]. So let me see. It looks like we have a question from Arthur Pineda of Citi.

Two questions, please. Firstly, are you able to elaborate on the monthly consumption trends? How this has changed going into March, April and May? I'm just wondering if there's any change in consumer spending given the impact of inflation? Second question I had is with regard to your Maya business. You've seen a recovery in this quarter. I'm just wondering what your expectations are in the trends. Any added stresses on the lending side given all the consumer pressures?

Yes. Sorry, we missed the beginning part of your first question, but allow me to take your question first on Maya, and then we can go back to your first question earlier. So you mentioned that you've seen Maya continue to grow, and you were wondering if there were any pressures that we're seeing. So Maya has continued to grow really strongly, and it did improve its profitability in the first quarter, and that was driven by growth in both the payments and digital banking side. So as you saw, Maya's loan book grew by 52% in the first quarter and quarter-on-quarter -- that's year-on-year. And then if you look at quarter-on-quarter, that grew at 10%, right? So that really represents consumers continuing to adopt the service. Our NPL ratio also came down from 6.1% to 4.9%. So that really reflects the strong portfolio growth as well as the effectivity of Maya's proprietary underwriting platform, right? Provisioning remains aligned with Maya's risk appetite. And when looking at the effects of the Middle East crisis, really, when we've spoken to Maya on this, they mentioned that they have not observed any material impact on overall business performance and activity actually remains stable. So they expect that to continue in growth, but they definitely are monitoring key metrics across. But as of now, they're not seeing pressure points yet.

I'll take that question. Lloyd Manaloto here for wireless consumer. So what we initially saw was that from Jan to February, we had an increase in top-ups. But starting in March, we're starting to see a softening in terms of top-ups due because the subscribers in terms of their top-up frequency are slowing down. But this does not mean it's all subscribers, but segments of our subscribers where we see this behavior. Having said that, we've instituted certain programs and product and capabilities like our hyper-personalization, wherein we were now offering targeted offers to these subscribers to get them to adjust in terms of their top-up behavior. So we're seeing some improvements in April. But in general, we do see the slowing down of top-up behavior.

John of UBS, I see you have your hand raised.

Three questions for me. First is on mobile. I think you characterized the softness quarter-on-quarter on mobility restrictions. Could you comment on, I guess, how the competitive landscape was in the first quarter? Because I think your competitor alluded to some price hikes that were implemented. So I was wondering whether you see the same trends. Second, on broadband, how long can we expect this systems migration to continue? Or put another way, how much are we -- like how much are we finished with this process? And how I guess it would affect future net adds in probably the second and third quarter? Third is, I think I observed a spike in both international voice revenues and the corresponding increase in interconnection costs. So I was wondering what the interplay between these 2 accounts were and why the sudden spike in the first quarter?

I'll take the first question. I think to characterize the quarter changes in consumer behavior -- in competitive behavior, I would characterize quarter 1 to be less -- to be more benign compared to previous quarters. And I think the key now is for the industry to go after the subscribers in order for them to top up more either with more frequency or for those subscribers could afford it, they would -- if we could actually price up on certain SKUs. Not saying that we're doing it for all, but there are certain SKUs where we can actually do some tactical price increases. Having said that, we're really leveraging on our capabilities for hyper targeting and hyper-personalization because we can't do blanket pricing increase. What we need to do is target the right product and service to match the economic needs of that consumer and also their context at that point in time.

If I may just add, just to provide context for our consumers. What is different today is that connectivity is actually one of their basic needs already. So even as the consumer wallet starts to shrink, staying connected still becomes part of their main need. And therefore, there is a certain level of resilience on how they will be connected. And in that way, the real role of wireless is to make sure that we are able to offer them the most price effective offers that they can actually avail at that time. And in that way, we should be able to keep the subscribers engaged with the network.

And question is in regards to the OSS migration...

So just for context, we've been operating and offering fiber services for a couple of decades now. And the current operation support system that we are using is actually one that is legacy driven. We've been using it for over 20 years, and it is no longer able to scale and innovate as much as we want to. So we embarked on a modernization program, and we consciously accepted a very short-term softness resulting from a migration of such magnitude. And we actually experienced some temporary operational friction. We began the OSS migration in December of 2025, and we actually are stable as of the first week of March. We are seeing that the flow-throughs have been enhanced and the processing of our orders from order to fulfillment have greatly accelerated. So that is giving us the capacity to even accept more applications and serve more customers. But more importantly, the operation support system serves as our foundation for future modernization such as the BSS stack, the digital stack for unassisted channels and our -- of course, move to AI. So the -- I think we have the modernization for this particular stage of the OSS transformation behind us now. We have stabilized, and we are now postured for growth Q2 onwards.

And I think the third question is in regards to our international voice revenues and the corresponding interconnection costs.

We have a wholly-owned subsidiary named PLDT Global and PLDT Global is in -- sells or trades international traffic volume to different operators. And this one has a margin of only less than 2%. That's why you can see that you have a high revenue with a high cost of interconnection. So that explains the increase in interconnection costs as well as the gross revenues of the gross churn. Do you get it, John, sorry, I'm not sure if you get it. John?

But is this business new because I think this was...

We've been doing that for a while actually, John. We've been doing that for the last 5 years, and it's giving us income. So -- and so far, so good. That's why I think you can better analyze our financials by taking that out. If you look at our management report, we usually don't include that. It's separately accounted for. If you look at our operating expenses, you don't see interconnection costs there because we try to separate the hubbing business from the service revenues.

Just read some of the questions that came in earlier this afternoon. This one is from Marky Carunungan. This is for our mobile business. Last briefing, management highlighted hyper-personalization and improving ARPUs as a key driver for mobile recovery. However, in first quarter, data traffic grew 10%, while wireless data revenues grew 1%. Could you give us some color on what is limiting monetization conversion despite the stronger metrics?

So the power of that service and the capabilities we're actually analyzing behaviors of our subscribers. We're seeing segments of our subscribers who are actually fully using up their load wallets. Before they would actually top up with some available data and then continue to load up. What we're seeing now, I think as a response to the inflation pressures is that these subscribers -- these segments of subscribers are actually using up all -- even up all the wallets. So there's no breakage on those data revenues. Having said that, what we're also now doing as part of our hyper-personalization is aside from upselling, we're also offering next best offer services to these subscribers because we know they're now under pressure because of the inflation. We try to give them the next best offer at maybe a slightly lower price, but we keep them in the system. So as you can see from our subscriber base, it's fairly stable right now and churn rates are stable at 2.5% for prepaid. It's not going up and our subs base is slightly increasing, it's because of those kind of services. So essentially, what we're doing now, we're not just using the capabilities of hyper-personalization upselling. We're also using it to protect the base, keep churn low and also get them to the next best offer. Is that clarifies?

Thank you, Lloyd. It looks like this question is for Home. So John, this is in regards to the ARPUs. You mentioned that ARPU softness is characterized by partly mix driven rather than structural pricing pressure. With fiber ARPU declining this quarter, has your view changed regarding the long-term pricing environment in broadband?

The question was from?

This is from Marky Carunungan.

So yes, I recall during the last investor meeting that we were going to really put a lot of focus on the product mix and ensure that we sustain our ARPUs. We are still continuing that effort. However, during the OSS modernization exercise, well, first, let me answer what is OSS. OSS is our operation support system. It flows in our orders from order taking to validation, to provisioning, activation and fulfillment. And during that period of modernization and migration in the first quarter, the prepaid orders were flowing much easier because they had to go through less gates. And the mix kind of got skewed a little bit more towards prepaid, but we never over-indexed. There was just a slight increase. Thus you will see the slight dip. Moreover, we did have some subscribers that were affected by the disasters that occurred in the third and fourth quarter of last year in 2025. And we wanted to keep them on the network, give them a chance to stay on as extended repairs resulting from recurrences of the earthquakes and the typhoons in the same areas. And because of that, we zeroed out their revenue so that we do not see any inflated revenue figures in Q1. However, as you can imagine, since they are active in the system, that has a dilution effect on our ARPUs. Again, that too is temporary and that too was an accepted -- rather something that was -- that we accepted would be part of the recovery efforts for the typhoon. That has since been normalized as we already cleaned up our base, and you will see a regularization of the ARPUs Q2 forward.

And from what I recall, John, a lot of these customers who extended assistance to have come back..

I won't disclose how many, but we lost only about 17% to 17.5% of those that were affected by the typhoons. They really appreciated the gesture of extending and not billing them for -- during the typhoons and earthquakes.

This question is for our enterprise business, and this is from Matteo Lorenzo. Good afternoon, on the one enterprise model, are you already seeing measurable cross-sell uplift from existing connectivity clients into cloud data centers, SD-WAN, A2P and managed IT? Or is the current enterprise growth still mostly driven by stand-alone product demand?

Thank you for the question, Matteo. So we are really beginning to see that growth already. I think we focus on the larger corporate, larger enterprises with that push out where basically a single relationship manager carries the full bag, if you will, of enterprise solutions, whether that be fixed, wireless or ICT. We're seeing healthy attach rates, especially in, I guess, companies that are scaling up on the digital infra side. So I think they're seeing the value of being able to come to one company for this. For example, with native companies or even all the way up to big hyperscalers being able to come to one place for your big circuit connectivity, your data center requirements, et cetera, is a big plus. So yes, we're beginning to see it, and we're continuing to roll that out to the rest of the large accounts and hope to get more lift from that.

Thank you, Blums. This message is from Marky as well, which he sent earlier, this is in regards to KPA, so Attorney Joan. Have there been any meaningful developments since the last on KPA? How do you assess the potential impact on the industry pricing and infra competition?

Thank you for that question. So since our last Board meeting, there's been some movement on the KPA, particularly on the drafting of the initial access list. So as you know, there's a technical working group comprised of the DICT, the PCC and the NTC, and they are in charge of formulating the initial access list. They have sought and we have given our views on the initial access list. And I think other telco players as well as access seekers were also asked for their views. Now the access list should have been released per the time line of the IRR last March. However, it's already May. And this is because there are many views that they had to consider. And in fact, the PLDT Group met with the TWG just 2 days ago to share some more information about our technical and operational capabilities to meet the demands of the initial access list. So given the situation, we believe that maybe the initial access list may come out in the next month or so. This means that per the time line set in the IRR, we have 2 months to issue the reference access offer. We told the TWG candidly last 2 days ago that it is virtually impossible to meet the 2-month deadline for the reference access offer because the pricing itself, which you mentioned in your question, would take at least a year. In other jurisdictions, like in Saudi Arabia, it took them more than a year to formulate a reference access offer. So we informed them of this, and we urged them to also do a survey of their own, and they considered our views in the latest meeting. So definitely, a lot of movement, but there are some delays that are understandable given the number of players that want to participate and get their views and voices out there. For spectrum management, there was an initial invitation for us to participate, but not much movement there because we understand that the TWG is taking it to one item at a time. So we imagine that spectrum management might be pushed back to end of this year or even next year. So that's it for now on the KPA. Definitely, everything on pricing is still up in the air. We are starting to work on that from our end, but no definitive movement there yet.

Thank you, Attorney, Joan. There are a couple of questions here in the Q&A box from Fernandez Michael. So the first is in regards to a potential REIT listing. Would this still push through this year? Is there an envisioned listing date? And how much does PLDT expect to raise? And will proceeds be used to pay down debt? So while there's no certainty on this.

Yes. The REIT is a key priority project as part of our asset monetization program. Unfortunately, we cannot really divulge about the timing. But again, this is a very important project. So it's quite urgent for us. So -- and we can also divulge the amount to be raised, so -- sorry.

But in regards to any asset monetization proceeds, whether it be asset sales or...

Yes. This will go to debt reduction to pay down debts.

Also from Michael, and this is for you, Danny as well. Do you expect any margin compression as a result of the U.S. Iran war? I guess on costs, how are we managing those? How that would be met?

So managing the costs, I think, efficiently except that we really don't know. If it's prolonged, then it's likely to impact our operating costs.

It's really very fluid at this point in time. But we've definitely taken measures to mitigate those costs as well. Okay. This question is from Paolo Manansala of COL. It looks like this is in regards to Maya. Just wanted to ask for more color on Maya's contributions given the sharp improvement in profits. Should we expect this level of profitability for the rest of the year? Or are there one-off gains in this period? So I guess to answer your question, Paolo, it's both, right? So there were, of course, very good improvements in regards to the core business, both on the payment side as well as the banking side. We did show the metrics earlier regarding loan growth, which has grown substantially. NIMs remain very healthy and the NPLs are actually trending down. So that's very good on our part, right? In terms of the payment business, that is also expanding, and they remain a very strong -- have a very strong hold on the merchant acquiring business as well. So definitely, that business continues to grow. It's a well-diversified business. And we expect to continue to contribute in that way. With that said, there are also some one-offs that were booked by Maya as well as some catch-up provisions that we recognized this quarter as well. So there are one-offs and these are non-recurring in nature. Well, PHP 285 million -- so...

PHP 285 million is cool, but it does include catch-up adjustments.

And then if you...

Because we normally finish our financials before February 28. But in the case of Maya, they finish it only after April -- or say, on April 15. So there are catch-up adjustments. That's part of the core income that we booked in the first quarter.

So on Slide 12, you'll see Maya's contribution to PLDT's core income. And then in our financials, you'll see the impact as well on reported net income, which in that line would include some of the one-offs. Okay. So there are some hands raised. Let me just go ahead with that. So Raymond Franco, you have your hand raised. Let me go ahead and allow you to unmute.

To continue on the Maya thread, just a couple of -- sorry, 3 questions on Maya. First, has there been a significant increase in the average term of the loan book? Second question, does Maya also like the banks employ an expected credit loss model? And if yes, does this ECL model impute the higher level of inflation as well as the weaker GDP growth? And then third question, any update on potential or planned listing of Maya? Those are all of my questions.

Yes. So thank you, Raymond. So first on the IPO, we're unable to comment on any speculation regarding whether it would happen or any timing of that. In regards to the increase in the loan book of Maya, what I can say is that really their bread and butter would be the Maya Easy Credit, right, which is a very popular short-term 30-day, maximum PHP 30,000 type of product. So I would say that this primarily makes up a good chunk of their loan book. I don't know if there's any significant changes to that, although I do know that, of course, they do have a very diversified business. They have a consumer business. They have an enterprise business as well. So as that mix changes, then we would definitely see some changes in the absolute loan tenor as well. Regarding credit loss model, I'm unable to comment on that in detail, but they are very well covered in terms of their loan provisioning. If you look at the BSP statistics, they're about 100% covered there. I hope that answers your questions, Raymond.

Yes. Yes. Thank you. That's all for me.

And Arthur, you have your hand raised as well.

Sorry, just a follow-up on Maya as well. Just to clarify, when I look at Slide 34, you have PHP 1.08 billion in equity contributions versus the PHP 200 billion to PHP 300 billion that you've mentioned. Just wanted to check what accounts for that big difference?

So -- yes. So basically, those are some value adjustments...

Value adjustments on the convertible and exchangeable bonds. That's a fair value adjustments on convertible and exchangeable bonds.

Okay. So it's a one-time adjustment. We should really be looking at the PHP 0.2 billion, PHP 0.3 billion.

That's the one-time, the one below the core income.

So if you look at the earlier slide, Slide 12, so that would include the contributions of Maya to PLDT's core income. So that would, I guess, more accurately show contributions from the business [indiscernible]. Okay. Some other questions from Fernandez Michael. What is your CapEx guidance for 2027? We don't have our budget yet for that. But I guess the general direction is to continue to be very prudent on CapEx, bring our CapEx intensity down since we do intend to make sure that we hit positive free cash flows and hopefully 2x net debt to EBITDA. Continue to sustain, yes, of course, and hit 2x net debt to EBITDA in the medium term. I think we read that already on the enterprise model. Let me just check my phone. Okay. This is a follow-up question from John Te of UBS. Is there any guidance for 2026?

Given the current condition, it's hard to give guidance, I think.

Yes, very fluid environment. The guidance we can give now is in regards to our CapEx as well as our continued efforts to be free cash flow positive. Another question from Fernandez Michael. How much does PLDT expect to raise from tower sales in 2026?

Around PHP 2 billion to PHP 4 billion.

Okay. So we have a few minutes left here. I don't see any other questions from the Q&A box. No raised hands as well. So I think that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. We hope that we were able to answer all of your questions. If we missed any, please feel free to reach out to me via PLDT Investor Relations box or by my phone. And we look forward to seeing you in our next earnings briefing come August. So thank you again, and have a great afternoon.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.