While Wall Street braces for one of the most contested initial public offering seasons in modern history, the Philippine Stock Exchange is quietly running in the opposite direction.
On American soil, three of the most talked-about companies on the planet are racing to go public before the others do. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, with a combined valuation worth over three trillion dollars, are each trying to capture institutional and retail liquidity before the market’s appetite runs dry.
All eyes are on queue leader SpaceX, targeting a $1.75-trillion valuation and a $75-billion raise that would be the largest IPO in recorded history, eclipsing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing.
Behind the record target, however, lies a business with a complex identity, as seen from its prospectus.
Underneath the cosmic spectacle, through rocket photos in space before its directory page, and the otherworldly mission statement of making life “multiplanetary” and extending “the light of consciousness to the stars,” is an internet satellite business (Starlink) subsidizing a cash-burning AI venture (xAI), while the legacy space segment (SpaceX) gradually fades into the background, struggling to extract revenues from a market that does not yet exist.
Despite this, Nasdaq (its theoretical exchange of choice) has proposed a fast-track index inclusion mechanism for newly-listed companies, potentially allowing large IPOs such as SpaceX to enter passive funds as early as 7 to 15 days after listing, a move widely read as an incentive for these mega-caps to list sooner rather than later.
The result, as DragonFi Securities CEO Jon Carlo Lim calls it, is a “liquidity black hole” where capital gravitates even more towards AI and AI-adjacent names in the US, and away from everything else.
At home, a stuck market
Back in Manila, the PSE picks up where it left off. With no fresh catalysts, no meaningful rule overhauls, hot money rotating out, we see the local market is trading sideways with a downward bias, and there is little in the short term to change that.
The thin liquidity and weak market depth are compounded further by a wave of exits this year. Asian Terminals dealt the first PSE delisting of the year last April 3, while Robinsons Retail Holdings is eyeing theirs on July 28—a decision seen by most analysts as a response to prolonged undervaluation and thin liquidity, which the management echoed thereafter.
Next on the chopping block is MerryMart, under DoubleDragon’s broader restructuring and portfolio optimization efforts, could also be heading out the door, which brings this year’s delisting tally to three.
On the additions side, the expected IPOs this year are at risk of deferral once again, as low participation and persistent undervaluation make listing conditions unattractive.
The recent proposal for relaxed IPO float rules was seen as a catalyst to push for a GCash mega-listing, but the fintech giant has shown little interest in having its shares listed on the local bourse as per various sources.
The hopes of any additions rest on MVP-linked names Vitro and Maya. But if GCash’s string of deferrals has taught the market anything, it is the reality that companies often await improved valuations and strengthened investor appetite, allowing them to raise more capital.
Boring bet of the decade
The unpleasant reality is that the country isn’t best positioned to build and foster our very own AI powerhouse like Google or OpenAI, let alone a Samsung or SK Hynix.
Facilities built around expensive, power-hungry infrastructure are a trap this country cannot afford—especially with the Philippines already posting one of the highest electricity rates in Asia at $0.201/kWh, more than double the regional average and second in Southeast Asia only to Singapore as of Sept. 2025.
Addressing the power constraint is of utmost importance before making leaps into the AI craze and hauling in investors to assemble the newest data center in town.
Renewable energy still in play
This is where the energy sector comes in.
In the PSE, that story is ultimately a renewable energy one. This is one of the few investable industries we see thriving from here.
Like the native exchange itself, it is slow, capital-intensive, and unglamorous to build up. But in the boring market like ours, the next decade’s alpha could be hiding among one of the overlooked renewable energy names along the way.
After all, Wall Street’s most exciting IPO season in a generation is ultimately a bet on energy too—we just happen to be standing at the source.
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