Boardroom Tea: GCash is ‘Pambansang IPO’

Ramon Monzon has one of the hardest jobs in town these days.

I invited him to *The Boardroom* on ANC to talk about the upcoming GCash IPO and, beyond that, the reforms meant to put some life back into the market. I asked who he’d be bringing along. His reply: “Just me.”

No assistants. No one to arrange his security pass, usher him in, or coordinate on his behalf. Sometimes, I was told, he even drives his own car.

The Philippine Stock Exchange president takes the heat for an exchange that has underwhelmed for years, as if he were the hive mind of every institutional and retail investor in the country. But from where I sit, the man knows how to handle divas of all shapes and sizes. But — at least from where I sit — it looks like the guy knows how to deal with divas of all shapes and sizes. He has to fix the engine while the car is still running — and he has to stay focused on the job no matter what the others are saying.

He sat down, chill and ready to roll, telling me his first job out of college was at ABS-CBN. (He refused to tell me what year.)

Once the cameras rolled, Monzon revealed he had been working behind the scenes on the GCash IPO since 2021. Mynt held off because it didn’t need the money and market conditions weren’t right. Finally, on October 20, the biggest IPO in Philippine history walks onto the trading floor.

Ticker: GCASH. Up to P92.3 billion at the P10 ceiling, closer to P60 billion if the roughly P6.50 pricing reported this week holds. Either way, it dwarfs Monde Nissin’s P55.89-billion record from 2021. A household name, and the first tech company of this scale to list on the PSE. Around 70% of the deal is reportedly spoken for by some 20 cornerstone investors, among them BlackRock, Capital Group, and Schroders. 

“It means the Philippine market isn’t irrelevant,” Monzon told me.

One of the biggest hurdles: the local market simply wasn’t deep enough for a company valued at up to P668.96 billion. A standard 15% public float would have meant putting roughly P100 billion worth of shares on the table, a big bite for a market this size. In February, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a tiered minimum public ownership framework that lets companies with a projected market cap above P200 billion float less, upon the PSE’s recommendation. Mynt is the first to use it, at 12%.

That sealed the deal. From a financial educator’s perspective, this is a beautiful opportunity to get people investing for their future. A pambansang IPO means ordinary Filipinos can put, I don’t know, let’s say P500 of their small savings into the app they already use every day, and into its push to lend to the small businesses they buy from.

True, the bulk of the money, about P76 billion of the P92.3-billion maximum, goes to early backers cashing out, led by Bow Wave Capital, Warburg Pincus and an Ant Group affiliate. Only about P16 billion is fresh capital for Mynt. But the anchors are staying put.

Globe keeps its 33.84%, Ant International its 21.44%, and Ayala and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are not selling either. The founders aren’t heading for the exit. The venture capitalists are, which is exactly what venture capitalists are supposed to do.

Monzon lit up when we got to access. “Imagine, people don’t have to open a brokerage account to invest in the IPO. They can just get onboarded onto GStocks in the very app they use every single day,” he said. The company is selling itself at its own counter.

What about the price? P10 is a ceiling, not a price. The final figure comes out October 1, after roadshows with institutional investors. Retail investors can then formally subscribe from October 6 to 12, and trading starts October 20.

All eyes are on October 20. But an IPO gets measured on listing day; a market gets measured every day after. For the sake of the Philippine economy, let’s not waste this chance to deepen the capital market.

Whether you like the terms of this listing or not, the truth is, this is bigger than GCash.