GCash joins top 3 financial giants as record IPO puts value at P442B

Insider Spotlight

• GCash’s P6.60 IPO price values Mynt at P442 billion, vaulting it into the top three Philippine financial firms by market value.
• From an SMS money-transfer service in 2004, GCash has grown more valuable than Metrobank, Globe and Ayala Corp.
• At roughly 20.8 times estimated 2026 earnings, GCash will need to keep delivering the growth investors expect from a fintech.

More than two decades ago, Ayala-backed GCash started with a simple but then-novel proposition: send money using a text message.

It found limited traction in those early years, making it difficult to imagine that the service launched in 2004 would eventually become more valuable than some of the country’s biggest banks.

A game changer came in 2017 when Ant Financial, now Ant Group, took a strategic stake in GCash parent Mynt Inc., bringing technology and experience from the group led by Chinese tycoon Jack Ma.

Few would have imagined where that experiment would end up. 

Now a top 3 financial institution 

On Friday, Mynt published its final initial public offering (IPO) prospectus at P6.60 a share.

This means Mynt will enter the stock market valued at about P442 billion, enough to dislodge the Ty family’s Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. (P275 billion) as the country’s third-most valuable financial institution.

Only Sy-led BDO Unibank, worth about P590.2 billion, and sister-company Bank of the Philippine Islands at roughly P498 billion remain ahead.

It also puts Mynt ahead of parent Ayala Corp. (P320 billion) and even Globe Telecom (P225 billion), which launched GCash in 2004 as an ancillary service to its then-dominant calls and texting business.

If that’s a surprise for many, it wasn’t for GCash chair and former Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu, who made this very prediction years ago.

“This little child of ours who occupied a small number of square meters in the Globe Tower, its valuation is now close to the mother company,” Cu said during GCash’s 20th anniversary celebration in 2024.

“Given the growth potential of where this is going to be, it would be very well one day that our fintech business be larger in market depth than our telco business,” he added.

From wallet to financial giant

The pandemic accelerated GCash’s rise as Filipinos turned to digital payments.

GCash now has 41.5 million monthly active users, with the app expanding well beyond payments into savings, investments and lending. 

As of June 30, it had 7.5 million active borrowers, 17.9 million savings accounts, 9.2 million managed investment fund accounts and 2 million local stock market accounts via partner AB Capital Securities. 

A P60.9-billion IPO

Mynt’s final prospectus dated Oct. 2 confirms an IPO that’s set to be the largest in Philippine corporate history. 

Here is how the offer breaks down at P6.60 a share:

• 1.61 billion primary shares worth about P10.6 billion, with proceeds going to Mynt
• 6.42 billion secondary shares worth about P42.4 billion, with proceeds going to existing shareholders
• The two make up the 8.03-billion-share firm offer worth about P53 billion
• Another 1.20 billion secondary shares worth about P7.95 billion may be sold under the overallotment option, potentially lifting the entire IPO to 9.23 billion shares worth P60.92 billion

Mynt expects to keep about P9.42 billion after expenses from the primary portion. 

Based on its final IPO prospectus, 60 percent, or P5.65 billion, earmarked for expanding its CreditTech lending business and the remaining 40 percent split between product development and general corporate purposes.

Global investors lock in P36.5 billion

Much of the IPO already has buyers, with cornerstone investors committing about P36.5 billion, equivalent to roughly 68.8 percent of the firm offer before the overallotment option.

The group includes some of the world’s biggest money managers:

• BlackRock
• Fidelity
• Capital Group
• Schroders

The P6.60 final price also confirms InsiderPH’s Sept. 23 report that cornerstone investors would enter at that level, well below the P10 maximum price initially cleared for the IPO.

Banks line up for the deal

The deal has drawn a sprawling banking syndicate, with Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and UBS serving as joint global coordinators and bookrunners, joined internationally by Jefferies, CLSA, HSBC and Maybank. 

On the domestic side, BPI Capital and BDO Capital are lead underwriters and bookrunners, alongside AB Capital, First Metro, China Bank Capital, RCBC Capital and EastWest.

What’s next? 

At P6.60 a share, Mynt is valued at about 20.8 times Morgan Stanley’s estimated P21.2-billion profit for 2026, which was earlier reported by the Philippine Star.

The multiple is hardly a bargain, putting the pressure on GCash to keep delivering the faster growth investors expect from a fintech.

Investors get their turn next, starting with an IPO briefing on Oct. 6 at The Fifth in Rockwell, Makati City. 

The public offer runs from Oct. 6 to 12, before the company that began by moving money through text messages starts trading under the ticker GCASH on Oct. 20.