Dennis Uy plans big reset for PH Resorts after years of financial strain

Insider Spotlight

• PH Resorts plans to move substantially all its operating businesses and liabilities to parent Udenna Corp.
• The PH Travel unit being transferred had a negative P7.92-billion book value at end-2025.
• The restructuring would leave a much smaller listed PH Resorts, with what remains and what comes next still unclear.

Davao-based tycoon Dennis Uy’s PH Resorts is headed for a radical makeover that would take substantially all of its operating businesses off the listed company’s books.

Uy is the chair of PH Resorts and the chair and CEO of Udenna, a private holding company which has investments in oil, logistics, telecommunications and education. 

Under the proposed restructuring, PH Resorts would transfer its entire ownership of PH Travel and Leisure Holdings Corp. to parent Udenna Corp., along with most of the group’s liabilities.

“The proposed restructuring is intended to relieve the company of substantially all such liabilities and reposition it as a streamlined listed holding company with a strengthened financial profile. This also addresses the going-concern uncertainty of the company moving forward,” PH Resorts said in a stock exchange filing on Monday.

PH Resorts has been grappling with going-concern uncertainty, meaning there are significant doubts over whether it has enough financial resources to keep operating over the longer term.

This marks a major reset for PH Resorts, whose shares remain suspended from trading and were last valued by the market at about P1.4 billion.

Dennis A. Uy 

PH Resorts chair, Udenna chair & CEO 

What exactly is moving?

PH Travel sits at the heart of the group, holding substantially all of PH Resorts’ operating assets, properties and related liabilities.

Its businesses include:

• The companies behind the unfinished Emerald Bay casino resort in Mactan, Cebu, which lost P13.65 billion in property and improvements after a repurchase option with Chinabank expired in 2025.
• Donatela Resort & Sanctuary in Bohol, where properties securing a Landbank loan entered foreclosure proceedings this year.
• A unit that owns 3,134 square meters of commercial property in Azuela Cove, Davao City, where a hotel and serviced-residence project has been planned.

PH Resorts said its other indirect subsidiaries have no material operations.

P7.92 billion underwater

PH Travel, however, had a negative P7.92-billion book value at end-2025, reflecting liabilities significantly larger than its assets.

Udenna would acquire the unit by settling advances that PH Resorts already owes its parent, with the final value and structure still to be determined.

Udenna also intends to help settle or assume significant obligations tied to PH Travel and said it would, “if possible,” continue providing financial support.

What will shareholders own?

The restructuring would leave PH Resorts smaller but carrying far fewer liabilities, with substantially all its existing operating businesses moving to Udenna.

PH Resorts has yet to detail what assets and businesses would remain or what comes next for the listed company.

The deal is not final and still requires definitive agreements, further reviews, shareholder approval and other necessary clearances.

—Edited by Miguel R. Camus