• VITRO REIT plans to price the IPO on Sept. 23, open the offer from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1 and list on the stock exchange in October.
• Projected dividend yields reach 5.8 percent in 2026 and 6.15 percent in 2027 at the maximum offer price of P11 per share.
• The 36-MW VITRO Sta. Rosa campus remains outside the REIT for now but could become a future source of growth.
Tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan-led PLDT is targeting an October listing for VITRO REIT, offering investors a stake in the country’s largest data center platform amid booming demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI).
This is a landmark listing that marks the first-ever data center real estate investment trust and the first IPO filing for 2026.
Selling shareholder ePLDT, a subsidiary of PLDT, expects to raise up to P24.2 billion and sell 49 percent of its shares at a top price of P11, although this will still be finalized upon pricing.
VITRO REIT plans to price the offer on Sept. 23 this year, with the offer period expected to run from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1 before listing under the stock symbol VITRO on Oct. 12, according to a June 19 IPO document seen by InsiderPH.
The IPO is being led by UBS AG Singapore Branch and BPI Capital.
The data center portfolio consists of eight operating facilities with nearly 24 megawatts of capacity, enough to power around 20,000 households.
What do data centers do?
Filipino investors have so far been exposed to traditional REITs that own offices, malls or hotels.
VITRO REIT is what happens when real estate and the tech narrative converge since it owns and operates the data centers that power many of the digital services people use every day.
When someone watches a YouTube video, makes an online bank transfer or asks an AI chatbot a question, the request travels through telecom networks to a data center, where servers process the information and send the result back to the user’s device within seconds.
Largest in the Philippines
VITRO REIT, whose oldest asset (VITRO Pasig) was built in 2000, offers the broadest data center footprint in the country with facilities spread across Metro Manila, Clark, Cebu and Davao.
The company and parent firm ePLDT account for about 33 percent of the country’s operating third-party data center capacity, according to Analysys Mason.
That’s bigger than Globe Telecom-backed ST Telemedia Global Data Centres Philippines at 26 percent, the research firm noted.
About half of earnings come from 1 facility
VITRO REIT’s biggest asset is the 12.3-MW VITRO Makati 2. This will account for 50.8 percent of profit from October to December this year and about 47 percent of net income in 2027.
Together with VITRO Pasig, the two facilities are expected to generate more than 70 percent of earnings over the same period.
VITRO Makati 2 and VITRO Pasig had IT utilization rates of 76.4 percent and 78.6 percent, respectively, at the end of 2025.
IT utilization, similar to occupancy in office buildings, measures how much of a data center’s capacity is being used by customers.
The company’s other facilities are VITRO Parañaque (40.8 percent utilization), VITRO Clark (74.3 percent), VITRO Cebu 2 (62 percent), VITRO Cebu 1 (52.7 percent), VITRO Makati 1 (48.7 percent), and VITRO Davao (42.5 percent).
Dividend outlook
About 70.4 percent of its data center capacity was being used last year and this is expected to grow to 73.7 percent by 2027, the IPO document showed.
At the maximum offer price of P11 per share, VITRO REIT expects to pay dividends equivalent to a yield of 5.8 percent in 2026 and 6.15 percent in 2027, its first full year as a listed REIT.
That means an investor who buys P100,000 worth of shares at the IPO price could receive about P5,800 in dividends in 2026 and P6,150 in 2027.
If the shares trade 10 percent below the offer price, the projected yields would rise to 6.44 percent in 2026 and 6.84 percent in 2027.
PLDT’s biggest data center to be injected later on
The flagship 36-megawatt VITRO Sta. Rosa campus, which was inaugurated by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. last year, is being carved out of the initial REIT portfolio because it remains under development and has yet to qualify as an income-generating real estate asset under the REIT Law.
This opens up growth opportunities later on if PLDT decides to sell the firm to VITRO REIT later on.
Risk related to VITRO Sta. Rosa
The prospectus also highlighted a key risk: PLDT may be unable to complete the transfer of VITRO Sta. Rosa before the IPO.
This would leave VITRO REIT shareholders exposed to the facility’s costs, capital requirements and debt.
For example, the largest component of the IPO proceeds going to ePLDT is earmarked to repay P12.8 billion in VITRO Sta. Rosa loans from BDO Unibank and Bank of the Philippine Islands that financed the campus’ construction.
Without the carve-out, those obligations could remain within VITRO REIT.
Earnings are sensitive to power rates
VITRO REIT will earn P662 million in the final quarter of 2026 and P2.84 billion in profit in 2027, the IPO document showed. Revenues for the final quarter of the year will reach P1.46 billion and P6.14 billion next year.
Power is VITRO REIT’s largest operating expense, with electricity costs projected at about P1 billion a year, equivalent to roughly 16 percent of expected 2027 revenue.
Securing electricity may be less of a challenge, as its ties to affiliate Manila Electric Co. help support its growing power needs.
Over 600 customers, a few standouts
VITRO REIT now serves 630 customers ranging from hyperscalers and cloud providers to banks, government agencies and multinational corporations.
The firm did not name the clients but said its largest customer of 24 years accounted for 27.8 percent of revenues. This was identified as a telco firm and likely the PLDT Group.
Its top 20 customers contributed 70.2 percent of revenues, including a leading Chinese tech giant, e-commerce, cloud providers, social media platform and a Philippine regulatory agency, the IPO document showed.
Industry outlook
Analysys Mason also expects Philippine colocation data center demand to grow at a compound annual rate of about 28 percent from 2025 to 2030.
It added that the Philippines trails regional peers in data center capacity, with just 0.8 megawatts per million people versus 1.9 megawatts in Thailand and 1.4 megawatts in Indonesia, leaving ample room for future expansion.
Miguel R. Camus has been a reporter covering various domestic business topics since 2009.
