First Pacific Company Stock

Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining the online briefing to discuss the First Pacific 2026, first 6 months financial and operating results. The result we transition that is only available on the First Pacific website, www.firstpacific.com under the Investor Relations section Presentation page.

Please note this results difference being recorded and the recording will be available on First Pacific website, this evening in the Investor Relations question.

If there's any participants on the media, please look the session is open for investors and analysts only. If you would like to raise questions, please contact us when the briefing finished.

Today, we have with us our CFO, Mr. Joseph Ng; Associate Director, John Ryan; and other senior executives from the head office in Hong Kong.

Over to you, John, for the presentation.

Thank you much, Sara. Okay, folks who are looking at the presentation we posted on our website at lunchtime. And let's begin with a new Page 3, which lists some of the highlights of the first half results of First Pacific and its operating companies. Our return profit, while it was down a little bit from 2025 first half, it was the second highest ever, and that's notwithstanding weaker rupiah and peso. More on that a little bit later. Thanks to the sterling work of our finance and treasury people, Standard & Poor's, have upgraded our credit rating to BBB with a stable outlook -- sorry, BBB. And we've got a stable distribution to shareholders with a yield at around 5.4%. And of the 5 analysts who cover first specific they've all got by or outperformed recommendations. Indofood continued its run of record highs with core profit up 7% to a record high.

For the full year, it's Food division ICBP sees sales going up as much as 7% for the full year, with a strong EBIT margin between 20% and 22%. Interestingly, in the second quarter, as they reported on their own results conference call a couple of weeks ago, overseas noodle sales were up 31% in the second quarter. That's an important engine of growth for Indofood.

Now over at Metro Pacific, again, record high core profit driven mostly by Meralco, but growth from other businesses as well. And for the full year, core profit is likely to see fourth record high in a row. Likewise, PLDT has its highest ever first half service revenues and EBITDA with positive free cash flow. Its credit rating, it's BBB and it has a very nice dividend yield of 8%.

And we'll speak a little bit about their Fintech, the Maya digital banking unit, we saw its contribution increased quite a bit in the first half of the year. Over at PacificLight, that's our LNG-fired power plant in Singapore. Revenues rose 12%, and construction has gone underway now on a hydrogen-ready combined cycle gas turbine power plant, which will open about halfway through 2029. Many of you have perhaps some interest in Philex Mining, which is developing a new mine down in the Southern Island of Mindanao now called Silangan, with rich reserves of copper and gold. And we've got 2 Board Directors of that company here with us today, and they can tell you about that in the Q&A.

In the meantime, it's older mine, Padcal doubled its contribution to First Pacific earnings with much higher metal prices notwithstanding lower volumes of production.

Let's skip over 2 pages to Page 5 with the usual snapshot of the shape of our gross asset value, $4.8 billion into foods just over 1/3. MPIC just over 1/4, and PLDT just over 1/5 with the Philex Group company. That includes Philex Mining and PXP Energy as well as some notes issued to First Pacific by Silangan. That's just under 10%. And then PLP, you see is 9% of our gap. And you might have noticed that we have incrementally been increasing its value to First Pacific, and that's because of the money we are putting in to help finance our share of that new power plant mentioned a moment ago.

Okay. Let's go 1 page down. We've got turnover up 6%, not quite a record high. We've seen it a little bit higher. Contribution from operations, this is all in U.S. dollars, of course, was down 2%, and that's because of weaker rupiah and peso, which were down by 5% and 6%, respectively, at an average exchange rate over the first 6 months of the year.

So into MPIC, however, did deliver the highest ever first half revenues on continuing growth and demand for what they offer to their customers. Now while our recurring profit was down 1%, it was still the second highest we have ever achieved at First Pacific in our 45 year or so history. The interim distribution to shareholders, a very important measure of our performance is unchanged at HKD 0.03 per share, notwithstanding the decline in contribution and recurring profit.

Now over to the next page where a brief word. You've got the credit ratings we have at the top of those bullet points. with the increase by S&P to BBB stable outlook. Our interest core ratio is 4.8x at the end of June, well above our comfort level, and gross debt and net debt little change really from 6 months earlier. And our blended interest cost about 4.5% and average maturity of 3.4 years.

Now some of you, particularly if your debt investors will want to hear what we're going to do about our bond that's maturing next September, so in about 13 months, $350 million blue column there in the column chart. It's a bit less than 1/4 of all our borrowings. And we've got the matter well in can.

Now a quick brief look at Indofood. Record highs for net sales and core profit and the outlook is very strong with ICBP sales being up as much as 7%. EBIT margin at 20% to 22%, and very healthy CapEx at IDR 5.5 trillion over at ICBP and for the rest of Indofood, another IDR 4 trillion. Did I say [ rubles ]? Rupiah, another IDR 4 trillion.

Now on Page 9, a quick snapshot of CBP. Record high net sales and profit up just a little bit, 1%, IDR 5.4 trillion as cost of goods sold rose about 12% in local currency terms.

Now a brief snapshot on Page 10, that rising stacked column chart shows you what the biggest contributors to the earnings at Indofood were. And as ever, it has been noodles, which just keep growing very, very strongly. As you can see in the blue bottom the right, noodles all by themselves constitute a little bit less than half of all sales by value at 46%.

Now let's turn to Metro Pacific on Page 13. You see where our almost 50% stake of MPIC makes up 26% of our gross asset value and measured at USD 1.2 billion. And as a reminder, that's the valuation when it was private launched way back in the autumn of 2023, I think. Now if you look at the market caps of the 2 of its biggest companies, Mindanao and Meralco, that $1.2 billion looks a little small Likewise, when you consider that the analysts who cover us and others put a rather higher value on that. I find it personally it's very interesting because it implies that our NAV discount isn't really not what you might think it is if you're using the $1.2 billion.

Now turning to Page 14. We can look at the contribution from the main businesses. Now the 3 biggest ones, Meralco toll roads and Maynilad, the water company listed in November, all delivered record high revenue and record high core profit, and you can see their contribution to earnings at MPIC in the bottom left chart. The water contribution is down solely because MPIC sold down in the IPO back in November, reducing its economic interest from over 50% to down around about 38%. And I won't still have a valuable time going blow by blow with all their operating companies. We can get into them during the Q&A.

So let's jump to Page 22, where we'll have a quick look at PLDT, where, again, it seems every half year and full year, we see another success of record high in service revenues. I've lost count of it, and there's a similar story with the EBITDA over at PLDT, where it was up 1%, again, to a record high. On the full year, these 2 items are expected again to report consecutive record highs. Now an important item for us to look at when considering PLDT is on Page 23. As you can see, we've got that red line in the top chart on the right-hand side, that's our CapEx to service revenues and the columns themselves are the money figures for the dollar figures for those CapEx expenditures. 2022 was the highest ever. And as you can see, it has fallen very, very sharply to below 20%. In the first half of 2026, it was 19% of service revenues, and we expect the downward trend will continue.

I believe it was in the last quarter of last year that PLDT went positive free cash flow, and that has continued through the first 6 months of 2026.

Turning now to Page 25, a brief word about PLDT's fintech, and that's a digital bank called Maya. Maya's contribution to PLDT's profit in the first half of the year was up just a bit less than 40% to PHP 559 million versus PHP 406 million in the first half of 2025. As these various column charts down below show you the growth over Maya, whether you're looking at deposit balances or loans outstanding. Remains very, very strong. The talk in the local media is that there will be an IPO of this business 1 day, and you can ask about that in the Q&A, and I'm sure we won't be able to tell you very much.

Now let's turn to Page 26, a brief look at PLP PacificLight Power, our LNG business, power business in Singapore. As you can see, electricity prices were up a bit in the first half of 2026 from -- you can see on the line chart on below. But the core profit was down 26%, that's a big line on the lower nonfuel margin for electricity sold under the new retail contracts. Very much the future is a big part of the story at PLP, which is building a very large hydrogen-ready power plant, which we expect to be running in commercial operations in about the middle of 2029, as mentioned earlier.

Now over to Philex, a very exciting mining company. Those of you who know me personally know that I'm a big fan of Philex. The Padcal mine saw -- well, overall, the business saw revenues down 9% because of lower tonnage, frankly, the equipment at the Padcal mine, which has been going for over half a century is getting a little worn out, and there are breakages. So there was lower grades, but the prices for the metals as you can see in the blue box at the bottom right or very, very much higher, and that resulted in a big increase in core profit at 56%.

Now Silangan, which is discussed on the following page, Page 28 is on track to open commercial mining towards the end of 2026. We are very excited about that. And when they settle in and everything is going smoothly, we will get in touch with fund managers to inquire whether they would like to go down and have a look at that mine. As you can see in the top blue box, the grades of copper and gold in that mine are far higher than what we've got at Padcal. And we're very excited to see what this will be doing for us going forward.

Now let's have a little wrap-up on Page 29 of my narrative and we can go to some questions. This is a chart on the left-hand side, rebasing our recurring profit and exchange rates of peso and rupiah to 100 in the year 2020 and how they have changed over time. As you can see, the peso was down 18% in the, what, 5.5 years since then and the rupiah down 15%. That's through to the June 30 exchange rate. While those are exempted by those percentage points, you can see our recurring profit has risen enormously. And we expect fully for this sort of situation to continue that mismatch between exchange rates and our U.S. dollar profit number. Because the IMS and many others expect that the signs of the economies of our 2 main markets will be doubling over the course of a 10-year period from 2020 to 2030. And that line chart there is from the IMS October world economic outlook, and we'll update it in a couple of months with the new one.

So that's a snapshot of where we've been in the first 6 months of the year. Executive Director, Chris Young has joined us eager to respond to the questions you're going to have. Sara?

John, we are now ready for questions. Jeff has the first one. Jeff, please go ahead.

Sorry, sorry, I just found out I was muted. Yes. Thanks, John and Sara. So maybe starting with 3 questions. The first one, I just want to check on the healthier expenses. I know the amount is not that big, but still on a year-on-year basis. I think the other expenses rose about 3x Y-o-Y in the first half to about $7 million. So just trying to understand any reason driving the spike in the expenses at the head office. That's my first one.

Second question, I know, John, you just touch a bit on the plan on bond refinancing, which will mature next year. So just trying to maybe hear a little bit more planned about that. Do we aiming for issuing another bonds? Or do we just going for bank loans in about 30 months as we refinance the debt? And the third question will be just regarding...

Jeff, let's start with the 2. Is that okay? Maybe we can come back with the third.

Okay, sure. No problem.

And of course, our CFO, Joseph Ng, will help you with both of those.

Jeff, it's Joseph here. Maybe I respond to the second one first. I mean the bond refinancing. The $350 million bond in September. So in 2027. So we have a little bit more than 12 months ago. And we are monitoring the market close here. At the same time, we are talking to quite a number of banks in making that to give a proposal, and we will explore also of refinancing options, including both the bond market as well as the bank market as well.

So we actually received quite a number of good closes in the math. So we are looking into order proposals. So as of now, we are not in a rush to get into either 1 of those 2 solutions. We are just monitoring market the market, in particular, interest rate market is, as you know, is very volatile, both the [indiscernible] and U.S. Fed and people have a lot of speculation as to what the U.S. trend will do and also people speculating as to what will be the impact to the long end of the curve after the U.S. Treasury coming up up with lots of different news [indiscernible] all sorts of buybacks and all sort of things.

And fundamentally, that also ties to what's happening to the inflation, the new round of trade war and the Middle East crisis as well. So all these are very volatile, so we monitor that closely. And I think in due course, I think the management and the core committee decision as to whether we go ahead.

Now in terms of timing, people are talking about whether we should go say, in the fourth quarter, before after the election and maybe coming back next year -- early next year when the market has new budget on the investor side or even a later part of that. So we are addressing all these advisers from given banks. And as I say, we have some time to assess the situation and make the decision.

On the other expenses, I think you're referring to the kind of the corporate overhead and other expenses. And if the -- we also noticed that there's a kind of an increase in the other expenses, I think it's mainly because of the provision of approval of certain long-term kind of incentive expenses at headquarters level, because in 2025, June of 2025, we started a mid-cycle of long-term incentive scheme. So for the first 6 months of 2025, it will take maybe half a month kind of P&L provision on it. what the full 2026, we have 6 months deal. So I think that's the main reason for driving up the so-called accrual provision for certain long-term incentive expenses.

Okay. Thank you, Joseph. Let's move on to the next question. Sara?

The next one will be from Timothy from Citi.

Sorry, I thought, Jeff, sorry, [indiscernible] my first. I got some questions on PLP. So first of all, congratulations on the ground breaking next month, I think I saw it on the announcement. Does management expect some timing gap after the commercial operation that is targeted in 2Q '29 before the plan to ramp to its full capacity. And is it fair to assume the financing done like account for 40% of the total budget as previously guided. I think in the announcement, it reset USD 440 million. So in other words, does that mean the total budget will be somewhere around USD 1.1 billion. And can we assume the $44 million spent by head office in first half '26 to be mostly PLP-related. Sorry for the long question, but I shall I come back later on the second one, please?

Thank you, Timothy. Can you help on the cash out from us? And maybe Richard can pitch in as necessary, Joseph...

I'll talk about PLP.

Yes, I think that's what he's talking about.

I think it's very important, Timothy, the project cost for the PLP front is somewhere around the -- I think as shown here in this slide is about $1.2 billion. thing or USD 900 million then about. And I think equity requirements for that is somewhere around [ $450 million ] thereabout. And we need to contribute roughly 42% of that. So our share of that to do may be somewhere around USD 150 million.

And you are correct that the depot of the capital investment showing the cash flow $44 million, $45 million about what that's actually for kind of our support to the equity portion for the project. So that's kind of the first part in the course of the remaining part of 2026 and certain for 2027, we still need to put in some more money to meet our -- stay altogether roughly $150 million capital investment into the project. But bear in mind, at the same time, we also collect dividends. We continue to collect dividends on PLP. So it's not that it's all one side on the investment actually. The financial discipline we imposed a PLP that while we need to kind of get the dividend from that. And then when they need the money, they need the equity, then we put the money in. So that's the kind of the prudent financial discipline we imposed on PLP. So I hope that has addressed your question.

Joseph, we're not borrowing to finance our equity contribution.

No, no, actually, it's all cash flow. Our debt level, I think grows at 1.47% and the net probably 1.3 something, remains unchanged. And I think there was an earlier question about the $350 million are refinancing is all refinancing and all the things that we are doing at the headquarters level in the recent past and going forward until 2027. I think the focus of that is on refinancing. We have no plan of taking on any new debt at the headquarters level.

Does that answer it Timothy?

Yes. But maybe I have some color on the operation after like early -- in the early years of 2029. Are we expecting the plant to be operating in almost full capacity at the getgo? Or shall we expect some kind of timing gap before significant or meaningful contribution from the new plant?

Well, I think it's just to tell now because, well, you need to basically kind of assess the so-called contract procedure. And that ties to the progress of the construction of the new front, right? Because we talked about 2029. I think the current time table is up and running until maybe the first quarter or second quarter of 2029. So you are talking about from today's '26, '27 -- so more than 2.5 years ago. So typically, the existing POP contract lasts between 1 year to 3 -- so it may be a bit too early to even talk to the customers about signing up the so-called customer contracts starting from the second quarter of 2029. So you don't want to face the situation to sign the contract at the delay in construction and completion that sort of thing. So I think it's just too early to say at this point in time.

Was all about 1 question, Timothy?

Yes, yes. So that was -- sorry, sorry, on that. That was one question. And my last question before I go back to the queue is also about PLP. Because on the gas supply issue, we actually heard from Singaporean peer and here that Shell has actually taken some kind of forced mature terms, which might lead to gas cost hike despite of the long-term contract. So I'm just wondering if we are seeing similar discussions going on between PLP and Shell on that. And for the nonfuel margin squeeze, given the retail contract terms, usually last maybe 1 to 5 years and with a peak retail on track which I assume would be dating back to 2022. Are we seeing this kind of margin squeeze to be stabilizing after the current first half 2016 levels?

Maybe I'll address the first part. The Shell, I think it's not a secret in the market that Shell -- they trigger some sort of course, major provision under the contract because they saw some of the gas from Middle East -- in the Qatar and they trigger certain kind of force majeure material what we show in the contract.

And that's on the contractual side, but commercially, there's been kind of ongoing very close regular kind of discussion between Shell and for us, PLP as to how to handle the situation. And for a situation like this mentally you get in the situation of getting alternate resources through Shell and other resources to try to puck. And I think so far, we have been having a very good kind of conversation discusses with Shell and to manage this situation. So on one hand, they are triggering the Force majeure position. So on the other hand, they're helping us to source the kind of alternate gas from other places and this kind of a timing difference. They give us the gas from other countries and as on the future, then kind of gradually kind of if you like repay or cut back the gas supply from a share over a certain period of time.

So overall, the impact is not that severe. And from what we see, the financial impact and on the other hand, we get some better margins from some other contracts. I think it's kind of pretty much [indiscernible] overall. So the impact is not as what we have expected initially.

Thank you, Joseph. Sara?

I think the next one will be on Tony.

Thank you for the opportunity. I want to ask specifically for input. I haven't seen the standard of price has increased for the recent 2 to 3 years maybe in this current environment with raw material price up. Is there any chance that maybe [indiscernible] price will increase in the future?

Tony, I'm sorry to not be very helpful. But broadly speaking, over the fullness of time, prices will go, and we are not aware of any plans or timing for such price increases right now. Sorry about that.

The next one will be Anthony.

I think you mean me, it's Tony Watson here. Just a question and a comment. Question is regarding the foreign exchange and derivative losses detailed on [ Note 3A ] of the financials you put out. Could you give us some background on what was being hedged? And if the position is still on?

Tony, broadly speaking, at First Pacific head office, the only thing we hedge is dividend income. And in our reporting the FX gains or losses that you see in our P&L, those are going to be a mixture of First Pacific head office and the operating company. And you'll see those numbers broken down by contribution from each of the units in our review of operations, which you'll find on our website. I'm afraid you're not here in this slide that you see in front of us. It's aggregated here at $51 million in the first half of 2026. And I believe Joseph, the biggest part of that was the bond from ICBP.

Yes. Tony you're referring the division we saw that we are showing here on the screen. The $51 million foreign exchange loss, a big part of that is attributable to Indofood. $2.75 billion on the they have a tranche of 10 years more in another 30 years advocating $2.75 billion. And if you do the calculation of about 6% depiction role in the first 6 months of 2026. Than netting of the tax and everything. So that's something like $40-something million already attributable to that bonus. So that's a big part of that. Of course, there are some other smaller items. But -- all in all, I mean, that's basically that the foreign exchange loss at the Indofood level.

But mind you that even though they are not hedging. They are not hedging the $0.75 billion foreign exchange exposure, if you like. And they are building up quite a bit of cash, in particular dollar cash in the balance sheet, I think, in the tune of somewhere around $800 million to $900 million of the day. So not hedging it, so taking the P&L heat on that hand, they also have the dollar cash.

So if you go back to the net debt or the net expossure -- FX exposure of Indofood you see that the net dollar exposure is somewhere around $1.8 billion, $1.9 billion, remember. It is not a $2.7 billion. And difference of $800 million to $900 million cash that they are holding.

Yes. Okay. Great. That's helpful. I think I can work through that. The other thing is just I want to put my hand up for the mine tour if and when that happens.

Ideally before year-end, but we can't promise, Tony.

The next one is back from Jeff again.

So switching gear a bit to Meralco. I know with respect to the recent, I think the news about potential charges on the distribution loss. So I know there are some conversation with the President going on right now, but can you remind us on this issue where we are standing at today? And are there any key dates we should be watching for maybe over the next couple of weeks or months.

No, Jeff, there are really not any key dates to look for. But what you're asking about is one of the parts of the electricity bill that household and business received, there are several parts. There's generation fee, there's a transmission fee, the distribution fee, which goes to Meralco, system loss is another fee, generation fee, of course, goes to the producers.

Now the system loss fee pays for the electricity, which has lost quite naturally as electricity moves through the cables. You ship out 100 maybe 99.5 arrives and that 0.5, which doesn't arrive, gets put into the bill as the system loss. Some time ago, and I think it was in the state of the union, President Marcos suggested that electricity industry should pay that rather than the customers. And that had a consequence for the share prices of lots of power companies, including Meralco, which I think was down year-to-date at the end of June by about 16%.

So that's where we are. It's up in the air right now. And however, the billing changes, I think at the end of the day, it won't be Meralco which will be paying that. But again, that's my own personal view, and I can't predict that will be the future. Anything more to add, Chris or Joseph on that?

Our next one will be Diego.

Could you give us a color on the potential combination of the Toll Roads of MPIC with the FMC Group Toll Roads. And also if that ends up happening, the 3 largest pieces of MPIC will have a much more updated valuation. I mean, Meralco, Maynilad and the Toll Roads. If that happens, would you consider changing how you account for its NAV.

How first Pacific accounts for the NAV of MPIC, Diego?

Yes, exactly.

Well, I think eventually, we will adapt how we view the value of MPIC as we get more solid valuations of the units, are you reminding us that Meralco is listed, so you can see the value of our economic interest. First Pacific economic condition on Meralco's about 23%, I believe. And with the listing of Maynilad in November, we have a good hard number on that as well and the implication of your question about a Toll Roads merger between Silangan and MPTC would give us a value of a solid number for the toll roads business.

Certainly, these 3 factors would definitely militate for a revaluation of how we value MPIC. Our 49.9% stake has a value since the delisting back in the autumn of 2023. Chris, I appeal, any color you can add to this question?

Well, one, in terms of the combination, I think the due diligence is ongoing, but certainly we have made it clear that the intention is to merge business at some stage. I think the challenge is that net asset value or valuation is not the way financial segments are prepared financial statements that are prepared and audited are on a historical cost basis. So within the broader financial statements of First Pacific, I think UE will continue to follow general accounting practices.

So as a result, there may well be a difference between what is included in the financial statements under general counter principles and what will be evaluation of the business. That is not to say that investors, analysts our Investor Relations department cannot themselves do a value and look through valuation of the business. But I think you will find, unfortunately, [indiscernible], that there is always going to be a difference between the underlying financial statements, which are audited because the basis on which they are prepared compared to a valuation basis, which is on a normally a basis which investors would -- well, one of the measures that investors would look at when they make a decision to invest.

And just to supplement that. I mean that's exactly the discussions on the basis of getting the credit rating upgrade from S&P when they take a fresh look about the valuation of MPIC. And that on that basis, we see basically look through the corporate share of MPIC and also address the point that Chris has mentioned, taken a more commercial approach to value the underlying asset of MPIC given that 2 of the 3 major assets. under MPIC, the water business and the power distribution generation business are both leased.

The only one unlisted is actually the Toll Roads that comes for a big part of MPIC. And then of course, there's a certain amount of debt at MPIC, Diego. But on that basis of non opportunities basically be valued at a high value of MPIC on the basis of that the kind of the value of MPIC is much higher than what we show in the books. It was also much higher than the monetization value at PHP 2.6, I think, PHP 2.6 per share. Sorry, PHP 5.2 during the privatization exits. So that's kind of validated by S&P in the rating process. I mean, all the investors and fund their own view as to which way to go, right, whether it's book value or the more commercial approach.

Diego, just for your penciling in, when they increased our rating to BBB. S&P explained that their value for our stake in MPIC doubled from $1.9 billion to $3 billion.

We have Timothy have additional questions. Please go ahead.

I have 2 questions. The first one is about Indofood on this payout. So if I calculate that correctly, implied payout ratio will be somewhere around 24%-ish of the earnings per share for what they are paying for PHP 2.90 per share. And given Indofood pretty solid cash balance, I think, is around USD 3 billion at the end of the first half. I'm just wondering if there's any clue on -- or any color on what they are going to do with the cash balance? And is there any consideration or at least intend to think about raising the payout ratio on the end. And I will come back for the second question.

Thank you for that very interesting question, Timothy. There are many, many people who want to see what will be done with that around $3 billion in cash that's sitting over there in Indofood. The pace you're looking at gives you the payout ratio as we accounted for it for 2025 full year, we will all recall that Indofood pays 1 dividend a year generally in the late summer time. So the last time Indofood spend money like that, it was, what, 6 years ago when they bought noodles businesses in Middle East and North Africa. That was, I think, $2.98 billion they spend how they might spend a similar figure of money now is the question you asked and is it a long way of me saying, I can't answer that question. So sorry.

I don't think it has any specific plans for that at the moment. And in terms of what the payout ratio might be going forward, as John said, it's an annual payout. So I think they will be taking into account not just the historic performance of the company or the balance sheet as it is today, but we'll be looking at what happens during 2026 and the outlook going into 2017. Obviously, they are fairly conservative in how they determine that payout ratio. So I think that they will really look to 2026 and the outlook for 2027 before they set payout ratio for next year -- or for this year, we did in 2027.

What would be your second question?

My second question is about my listing plan. So I think just now like just today, it was reported that cash is looking in October. And I have been browsing some relevant news reports as well although, of course, the IPO price is not confirmed yet, but I think I read somewhere that they are looking for $8 billion kind of valuation? Or I think Reuters in June actually talked about that main parent companies looking to raise USD 1.5 billion. So I'm just wondering, just to get a sense like how big is Maya compared to GCash like -- and just to guesstimate the size that we are looking for. And are we still looking to list by sometime in 2027 as discussed last time.

Chris, let's turn to that again, please.

I think it's not easy to do a direct comparison between the Maya business and Globe's GCash business because really the focus of the business is somewhat different. The strength of GCash is effectively the wallet, the GCash wallet where as you can see, I think this is Page 5 of the presentation from the Investor Relations presentation, the one you had here [indiscernible] '25. The real strength of Maya is in its fintech platform, and particularly the banking platform. You can see that the deposits have grown quite robustly and the net interest margin is quite high.

And on the basis of the deposit balance flow growth, the loans outstanding are also growing. So -- it's -- I think the GCash valuation is helpful but it's not really going to drive the Maya valuation because the Maya evaluation is really going to be driven, I think, principally by the fintech stroke banking business of Maya. But yes, I think it's fair to say that we would -- I don't think we can do it as soon as GCash, but it would be an intention to list Maya at some stage in the not too distant future.

Basically once a while at the other bank.

No, Maya does have a wallet. But the bigger part of the business. The bigger part of the business, I think GCash is the wallet, the bigger part of the Maya business is the Fintech road banking platform.

I think the next participant a question, [ Ms. Sareena ].

So I'd like to ask, given the current Nigeria condition that is much better [indiscernible] another impairment for final Investment from Indofood.

Sorry, Sareen. Please repeat your question. We lost you for a moment.

All right. So given the current [indiscernible]. Is there any chance of another impairment for Pinehill investment from Indofood.

No. We didn't fully catch your question. But I think give us in respect of the possible Pinehill impairment, which I think actually was not Pinehill itself. It was the associated company in Nigeria. I think -- in both cases, the answer would be no. I think the overall Pinehill business continues to perform well. So I think the likelihood of impairment, there's no real likelihood of impairment -- in fact, in respect of the Nigerian business, one, the business has continued to perform well and the local Nigerian currency, which I think it's called the naira has actually -- I'm not sure if it's strengthened, but it has not really -- it's steady. It hasn't weakened in the past few months.

So again, very little prospect or no need for any further impairment of that Nigerian associated there. I think the impairment when it happened, was not really because the business underperformed. The business was doing well. It was that the naira devalued quite sharply over a period of time.

As you can see, [ Sareena ] on the bottom blue box on this page here, we have very strong growth in Asia and Africa inside of which are the Pinehill businesses. 15% growth in sales, and that's by U.S. dollar measure. So we're actually feeling quite good about the business overall.

Jeff Kiang from CLSA has another question.

I promise this is my last one. Can you remind us on the PLP, how is the renewal schedule with the retail contracts looking for? I mean, basically, how many years before another round of renewals of existing contracts.

Jeff, this is Eliza. We have a whole range. I'm not at the liberty to retaliate that percentage, but we have a whole range from 1 year, 2 years to 3 years. We don't really have the super long-dated contracts that almost the other competitors have. But we're quite happy with, I would say, a very good distribution amongst those 3 different tenants.

I think we have answered all the questions. Chris, may I have you give us the closing remarks?

Well, thank you all for calling in today. I think -- I hope you've seen from the investor presentation that many of the group companies have reported record earnings in the first half of the year is included Indofood, ICBP, Meralco, Maynilad and Toll Road businesses. So while the businesses will face some challenges going into the second half of the year, the continued trend of our businesses gives us confidence for the full year outlook.

In comparison to our peers, I think we can continue to consider ourselves to be undervalued. But we feel that First Pacific is well placed to continue to grow in the medium term as well. So we do get in touch if you need a follow-up. And remember, our IR team will be visiting fund managers abroad in the next several weeks. So thank you again for calling in today.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, everyone, for joining today's online evening, and you can disconnect. Thank you.

Hello, and welcome to the 30th Deutsche Bank's Depositary Receipts Virtual Investor Conference, dbVIC. My name is Zafar Aziz, from the DR Investor Relations advisory team at Deutsche Bank. I'm pleased to announce that our next presentation will be from First Pacific. Before handing over to our presenter, some points to note -- please submit your questions at any time throughout the presentation. Finally, all of today's presentations will be recorded and can be accessed by the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome our speaker, from First Pacific .

Thank you very much, Zaf, and Deutsche Bank for hosting us and Violex Digital for giving us the technical capacity to connect to all of you. Now I'm going to walk through a very long presentation.

We've got about half an hour for this whole show. And this means we can only touch upon a few slides that I regard as the most relevant. You will always be able to find the most up-to-date version of this presentation on our website, and I urge you, if you would like to learn more about First Pacific to study it fairly closely because I reckon inside those 58 or so pages, there is the answer to every question that I have ever heard in my 16 years over at First Pacific.

Okay. Now let's begin. When you download that document, anything that looks underlined and in blue, that's a link that you can click on. Sometimes it's to external websites for further information. Now to remind us all what is First Pacific. We're a holding company stock code 142hk listed again in Hong Kong. And these are the logos of some of our most important assets that we're invested in.

We generally stick to four areas of the economy, and we color code them throughout this presentation. Consumer Food products, infrastructure, telecommunications and natural resources. Under consumer food products, we own a majority of Indofood, the world's biggest maker of wheat-based instant noodles and one of -- personally one of my own very favorite companies.

Under infrastructure, we own 49.9% of Metro Pacific investments. That's a company we delisted from the Philippine Stock Exchange about 2.5 years ago. And it is a big or controlling investor and many of the most important companies in the Philippines, such as Meralco, the biggest electricity distributor and its 100% owned subsidiary, MGEN, which is fast, fast, fast, rolling out natural gas-powered and solar generation capacity, which will be going forward, a big driver of earnings growth there.

Pacific Light Power is an LNG-fueled power plant company in Singapore, and they've already got a second fast-start reactor, and they're building another natural gas plant to go online in 2029. So that's a company that performs very well and has a bright future.

Under telecommunications, PLDT's got largest market share in fixed line, a little under half of wireless and maybe 70-or-so percent in the data center space. It's 100% owned subsidiary Smart is its mobile telecommunications brand. And Maya is its 38% owned digital bank and the talk in Manila is that sometime in the next year, 1.5 years, they will IPO this digital bank, which has been growing very, very fast, and I will touch upon it a little later on.

Under Natural Resources, our 46% owned Philex Mining Company is in the next few weeks or a couple of month going to open a brand-new gold and copper mine down in the south of the Philippines and Mindanao, while continuing to extract copper and gold from its, "Oh, I think it's about a 60-year old mine called Padcal up in the north in Luzon. And then IndoAgri is the plantations holding company underneath Indofood, which supplies palm oil for the noodles business and for selling to, in wholesale and retail market to folks as cooking oil.

Now at the end of 2025, what we owned looked a bit like this, USD 5.3 billion. The biggest asset, as you can see is Indofood, followed by -- looks like MPIC, than PLDT, than the Philex Group and then PLP. We've had a pretty good decent run as you can see. Since the end of 2003, we've had CAGR of 7% in our gross asset value. And we've had a CAGR of 15% in the dividend income that we get.

And perhaps the most important bullet point in this entire presentation is the last one on this page. We are confident of continuing earnings growth over the short to medium term in our companies. And I'm going to jump ahead to a particular little slide to explain our confidence.

Here we go. This is Page 7 of the presentation. And on the left-hand side, you can see our profit and exchange rates of our two main currencies, the Philippine peso and the Indonesia rupiah set to 100 in 2018. And then this line chart displays how they've changed over the following 7 or 8 years to the end of 2025.

And as you can see, the peso is down 14% over that period and the rupiah is down 11%. And this really is the illustration of the concern people have about investing into emerging markets, FX risk. Well, as you can see, they are down over those several years, but look at our profit, this is a U.S. dollar figure over the same period. It's up more than 2.5x. And if you ask yourself, what's going on here? Well, the International Monetary Fund has kind of an answer for you, and that's illustrated in the chart on the bottom right.

Now we've taken the data from their world economic outlook of last October. They've updated it earlier this month, but we haven't had a chance to put those numbers into our presentation. And as you can see, the IMF is forecasting that these economies of Indonesia and the Philippines will double in size in the 10 years from 2020.

Now let's go back to our regular programming. Over the full year of 2025, we established for the nth year in a row, some very good strong records. We've got a seventh year in a row of earnings growth. The past five have been successive record highs. Our dividend policy very important to shareholders is a progressive one, which means every year, we commit to giving you more money than we gave you last year.

And the distribution for 2025 was at a record high on a per share basis. And given that our policies every year, it will be bigger, you can expect that every year is going to be a successive record high. Now if we look at the middle graphic here, what was responsible for the big jump in our recurring profit, 10% in 2025, very well done from $673 million to $740 million.

Well, as you can see in that middle chart, PLPs contribution declined a bit. That's our power plant in Singapore. And so did the phone company, very interesting, we'll drill into that number. And then a little bit more from Philex, our mining company. Thank you, high gold prices. Lower spending at head office, mostly because of interest, I believe, off the top of my head. And then Indofood and [ Wow ], MPIC is responsible for the lion's share of the increase in our profit in 2025. We'll drill into those companies as time goes by.

Now our cash flow is displayed in column chart at the bottom of this page. And you can see we began the year with $121 million, about $311 million of dividend and fee income. And look, the biggest outgoing, of course, is money handed straight back to our shareholders. And then, of course, our interest bill, which show up until recent events in the Middle East, we expected would be declining. But -- if interest rates are going up, that interest bill is not going to go down.

Details on the next page. We invested some new money into our Singapore power plant. That's the 46.4% you see there and that's to take care of our portion of the equity contribution to the construction cost of that power plants, and then we got some overheads and stuff like that.

Now we have got two investment-grade credit ratings from Moody's and S&P, and we've had those investment-grade ratings for 3, maybe 4 years or so now. The column chart at the left -- top left of this page shows our maturity profile. And as you can see, we have nothing falling due until September 2027 when our only outstanding bond matures.

And it is our preference in the 1.5 years until then to refinance it with a new bond offering. If you look down at the pie charts at the bottom of this page, you can see that bank loans make up about 3/4 or more of all of our borrowings and the bond is a little less than 1/4.

We generally have a preference for a 50-50 split -- and it looks like this today because that's what the market has been dictated -- has been dictating in recent years. It's just been cheaper to go with the bank loans. And in any case, you can see in that other pie chart, the fixed and floating ratio is pretty close to 50-50.

Now bottom right, we've got our dividend income. Over the past few years, 2023 was a record high, thanks to a maiden contribution from PLP in Singapore. And then for '24, '25, comfortably over $300 million, and that's kind of a level that we're getting used to.

Our interest coverage ratio is the first measure we look to when we consider how comfortable we are with our cash flows and balance sheet. And at 4.5x, we feel pretty well set. Our gross debt is a bit under $1.5 billion, as you see described on the right-hand side and then net debt about $1.3 billion.

Now average maturity is quite short, 3.2 years. Now if we come back and speak to each other in 1.5 years, and we've issued a new bond, then that 3.2% is going to be a much greater number. Very important to understand of all the companies that we're invested in we guarantee none of their borrowings, none of them have any recourse whatsoever to First Pacific.

No guarantees, nothing like that. Now in the many pages of this booklet, you will see described some borrowing figures for all of these companies. And you can take it on [ faith ] that all of these numbers are what you get. And we don't mess around, if anything, off balance sheet or troublesome like that. Now let's go on to the companies very quickly because we're already 12 minutes into this presentation.

Indofood saw record high sales, record high core profit but it was an increase of only 1%. The Consumer Branded Products business, which is inside separately listed ICBP, also had record high sales -- and frankly, that small growth in profit was driven by the agribusiness and to a lesser extent by the flower business.

And that is hinted at in the EBIT margins that you see in the bottom right here. The noodles margin fell a little bit. Bogasari is our wheat and flower business. Their margins increased by about 0.7 percentage point and agribusiness stayed strong. Those are the guys driving most of the earnings at Indofood. Very quickly, ICBP, that's 80% owned by Indofood separately listed on in Jakarta -- and as you can see, record high sales.

The core profit was down a bit because they had a big increase in cost of goods sold. Now looking ahead for Indofood and ICBP, over the medium term, we expect demand for instant noodles to have steady upward pressure, and we're confident that we'll return to a path of generally speaking, earnings growth over the medium term.

Now we're going to skip over to MPIC, which is itself a little bit of a complicated company. In the pie chart that we showed you on -- earlier in this presentation, we value our 49.9% of MPIC at $1.3 billion. And that is because it's the valuation it had when it was privatized, delisted in October 2023.

Many of the assets that owns are listed such as Meralco that's listed in Manila. MPIC has about 48% of that. I described it earlier. MPTC, which we own about 93% of is the biggest privately owned toll road operator in all of Southeast Asia. There are some toll road operators, which are bigger, but they're government-owned or controlled -- and Maynilad is the biggest water company in the Philippines if you're going by a number of customers, and they've got about 1.6 million customers there.

Now the hospitals business, which we began building up, I think, in 2008 with one hospital is now up to 29. Several years ago, we sold down to 20%, selling 80% to KKR some big investors and to GIC of Singapore. And we've got some other investments in MPIC, but they are negligible contributors as we can see here on this actually will, on a subsequent slide, pardon me.

Now MPIC, as you can see, we own 49.9%, and it's about 1/4 of our gross asset value as measured at that price of $1.3 billion. Now later on in this presentation, you can see that analysts at CLSA and Citi have much higher numbers for the valuation of MPIC. And we will get to that. But let's have a quick look at their earnings. As you can see in the pie chart, Meralco, the power company generates the lion's share of the contribution to profit growth.

And as you can see, the change in contribution in 2025, the increase was driven by Meralco followed by the water business, others. And toll roads was a very tiny increase, and that's to a great extent because we reduced our stake in it from 100% to, I think it's 93.3% or [ 0.6 ]. Because these are utilities, we feel that MPIC is a very defensive company to be invested in.

And as you can see in their earnings column chart on the bottom right that has had steady increase in earnings since a low point owing to the pandemic crisis several years ago. And we expect, over the medium term, good continuing strong growth from MPIC. Now that's all we're going to say about MPIC earnings and those of its companies, because we've got a very condensed time line here.

I do invite you please to look over this presentation in some detail and then come back to me with any questions that you might have. Now over to PLDT, which we regard as the biggest Telco in the Philippines with its big market shares in fixed and data centers and also in the mobile space. Service revenues every year keep going up to a record high. And as you can see in the breakdown there, data is an important part of those revenues.

Data consumption grows ever higher every single year. I suppose that's true to have most Telco markets. And it's definitely true by the Philippines. But it's competitive and people on a unit basis are paying, generally speaking, less for data every year as time goes by. Wonderful if your consumer, a bit tough if you're a Telco. EBITDA itself was up at a record high, up 3%.

Core profit was up by 1%. So that's similar to the Indofood performance, isn't it? And that is because of a big contribution from Maya. What is Maya. Maya is a digital bank. It has a banking license from the BSP, the Central Bank of the Philippines. And it is the only telco-owned fintech to have a banking license and I regard it as an extremely exciting company.

PLDT is, in many ways, a typical Telco offering you, an excellent dividend yield year in, year out and generally not having the kind of fast growth that you would expect from other kinds of investments, for example, Maya, let's have a look at what's going on there. My shareholdings are down in the fine print at the bottom, and they're a very, very good list to have if you're talking about a fintech, Tencent of China earns 15%, and KKR previously mentioned, they own 30%. And the management team that we've had at Maya for the past few years has really done a quite impressive job.

I mean, look at the number of bank depositors we've got. We're up to more than 10 million depositors rising very fast over the past few years. Deposit balance showing a similar rate of increase and then loans outstanding, very high growth to maybe 40%, 45% proportion of all the deposits that we have outstanding.

Now you know instantly that this is an emerging market business, because the net interest margin, and that's the difference between the cost of money when we lend it out and the price of money when we pay our depositors to put their money into Maya. It's 20% net interest margin. So if I'm giving you 10% on your deposit, the implication is, I'm charging someone 30% on their loan.

And when you think that's quite a scary look a number, you have to consider that this is a market where half maybe 70% of all the adults don't have a bank account. And borrowing is -- has been in the informal economy, which can be rather less pleasant, shall we say, than borrowing from a bank.

And Maya seems to be performing pretty well on that score because the gross nonperforming loan percentage, as you can see, is at a healthy 6.1%. And I believe that is lower or very comparable to the long-established brick-and-mortar banks that we have in the Philippines. Now I think I may have mentioned Maya is expected by many to have an IPO in the next year or 1.5 years.

I believe it's CLSA, who recently issued a research report on fintech in the Philippines, and they put a valuation of $2 billion United States on Maya, which compares quite curiously with the market capitalization of its 38% owned parent PLDT, which is about $4.6 billion.

Now let's go to PLP, which is our power plant in Singapore. They had a terrific year in 2023, then the market tightened up a little bit, and it's more competitive, more power plants coming online and it is a little bit less profitable than that record-setting year of 2023. It is a strong payer of dividends to us and we're very pleased, and we're very happy to be contributing some of our cash flow towards construction of that new 670-megawatt power project, which will come online in a few years' time.

Now I confess, I'm a little bit of a gold bug. Philex Mining, we've got an economic interest of about 46% in this copper and gold mining company. And if you look at the statistics here, it's not terribly impressive. You can see the operating cost to produce 1 ounce of gold was $2,500 last year, and that's pretty dug-on expensive until you understand that is a very, very old mine. So of course, the grades will have been declined from much better levels of decades past. And gold price has been healthily above $2,500 an ounce -- but the excitement of Philex, really is in the new mine that it will open in to commercial production over the next few weeks or months. That's called Silangan.

And the grades, you can compare them on these 2 pages of gold and copper are much higher at Silangan. It's a very exciting project. I can't wait for them to open commercial operations. And once things get settled down, I am very much looking forward to taking a handful of fund managers, if they're interested, down deep into that mine to see how it's all working. Initial production is set to be 2,000 tonnes of ore being processed every single day.

Now we're 22 minutes into this presentation. Let's talk about some valuation thoughts. Now NAV per share over the past few years has increased, as you can see, on this column chart, we've got data from the end of '22, '23, '24 and 2025. So that's 1, 2, 3, 4 years of data of the value of First Pacific.

Now these numbers for Indofood, PLDT and MPIC, et cetera, these are valuations of the stakes we own in those companies. So at the closing stock market price of December 31, 2022, our 50.05% of Indofood was worth about $1.9 billion.

So that's how these numbers are working. For those assets of ours, which are listed, FPM Power -- you can see it was $150 million, then up to $370 million, $370 million and then $400 million. We generally value our stake in PLP, 42% interest at the money that we've put into it. Certainly, in the past 3 years, we've done that. We put in a little more this year. That's why it went from $374 million to $400 million.

MPIC, we value again at that privatization price around $1.3 million. Now with the improvement in our share price, you can see our NAV discount, the very bottom number here has tumbled from 60% to 17%. Now let's have a look at who covers us. We've got 3 analysts in Mainland China covering us. And if you read [indiscernible], send me a note and I'll forward you their research.

In the English language, it's Citi and CLSA. Now Citi and CLSA, as you can see, in these blue out numbers, they value MPIC at a much higher level than we do. Ours is 1.3. And that is because the assets under MPIC have -- well, Meralco is listed separately and its market cap is around $12 billion.

First Pacific has an economic interest there of about a quarter. So our stake in Meralco, $3 billion is already more than 2x how we value our stake in MPIC. So you can see that these analysts have -- they've got some pretty solid grounds for their higher valuations of MPIC and these feed down into their price targets of $7.30 at Citi and $7.20 at CLSA. These are Hong Kong dollar numbers. Now we've hit the 25-minute mark, and I need to give you folks an opportunity to ask some questions. So please go ahead and type those in.

And I'm going to move to a very important page, which is a page that shows our economic interest in all of the assets underneath us. So please send your questions to me. Okay. Sorry, I needed to click on a button to see what's going on.

Someone's asking me to recommend a broker for specific shares. I can't. I'm so sorry. I have no idea. Our gold mine was scheduled to open in the first quarter that has ended, and it's still not open. And my understanding is there are some deliveries and construction running a little bit late. I think it's only going to be a couple of months or so, not something at all that I worry about.

Another correspondent ask what I think the market is missing about First Pacific. Well, I think a lot of the market isn't as understanding of what we are as we would prefer. Hence, our very strong efforts at investor outreach. For many people, our liquidity isn't what they would like or our market cap is smaller than they would want to have.

And still others, they would rather not get a basket of emerging Asia stocks when they buy First Pacific, but to pick and choose their own. So if they don't want a food company, they would go in and buy PLDT direct or Meralco direct. I think that's what's going on. But with the big increase in equity analyst coverage from Mainland China, we expect that group of shareholders to increase beyond where they are now.

This page in our book, we update from time to time. And as you can see, China securities depository and clearing a lot more fund managers based in Mainland China owned First Pacific now than they did a few years ago. And I think that number is going to keep growing over time.

Another question asked about the balance between new deals, debt reduction, dividends and buybacks. Let's go backwards from that, buybacks. In an environment of rising share price, I don't even dare bring up buybacks to the Board Directors because why making new shareholders compete for our shares and then pay a higher number.

Our dividend policy was back in the day linked to our recurring profit, but our profit was going through much faster growth in our cash income hence, the change to a progressive dividend policy where it's a flat commitment to hire every year.

Regarding debt reduction, we've had the same level of debt, pretty much unchanged for the past several years. And simply, we're comfortable with where it is. We're not looking currently either to increase debt or reduce debt.

Now the last item, new deals. You'll have seen in recent history that those have been done mostly at the operating company level, not at First Pacific level, and that's likely to continue going -- to be true going forward. Now with several years of record profit, record dividends and investment-grade ratings reaffirmed do you feel First Pacific is now positioned to step up capital returns even more.

Well, frankly, yes, every single year, we're committed to giving you a higher dividend than in the previous year. And that pretty much is where we sit on that. Now for those of you who want to ask a question off-line, please send me an e-mail. You can WhatsApp me. My WhatsApp numbers at the very back of this presentation. Keep checking back from time to time because we do update this. Next update will probably have end March shareholder breakdown.

I'm very grateful to all of you for attending this presentation and again to the folks behind it who have allowed us to present to all of you. I urge you all to reach out, keep your eye on First Pacific. In my 16 years at this company, I've never been so happy or excited to be doing the job that I have.

So thank you very much, investor community for making this a very fun experience. Have a great day, everybody.

Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining the online briefing to discuss the First Pacific 2025 Full Year Financial and Operating Results. The results presentation is available on First Pacific's website, www.firstpacific.com under the Investor Relations section Presentation page. This results briefing is being recorded, and the replay will be available on First Pacific website this evening in the Investor Relations section. For participants from the media, please note the Q&A session is open for investors and analysts only. If you would like to ask questions, please contact us when the briefing is finished.

Today, we have with us our Executive Director, Mr. Chris Young; our CFO, Mr. Joseph Ng; Associate Director, Mr. John Ryan and Mr. Stanley Yang and other senior executives from the head office of First Pacific.

Over to you, John, for the presentation, please.

Thank you, Sara. I'll just go through very quickly the First Pacific part of this presentation, then we'll move to the Q&A for you folks.

Now let's begin on Page 3 with a quick reminder of some of our major investments, all of which have done pretty well in the course of 2025, and we'll discuss this later on.

Now on Page 4, we've got the shape of our gross asset value on December 31, 2025. The gap was about $5.3 billion, Indofood just over 1/3. MPIC valued there at $1.3 billion, the U.S. dollar value of the pesos we paid for it when it was privatized back in the autumn of 2023. We own now about 49.9% of MPIC. You might see there that PLP's valuation has increased to $398 million, and that's because we've put some money into it to help finance the building of a new power plant, which our financial controller, Richard Chan might discuss later if that's of interest to you folks. And then, of course, there's PLDT, our 25% or so owned telephone company. And then there's the Philex Group of companies, which make up just over 10% of our gross asset value.

Now let's move on to the earnings for 2025 on Page 5. Turnover was up 2%, a little over $10 billion, higher revenue at Indofood and MPIC. Decline at PLP, PacificLight Power. Contribution from operations reached a record high. I believe like the recurring profit, it's been about 7 years in a row, we've had increases in the previous 5 have been records. Indofood, PLDT, MPIC highest-ever revenues and MPIC delivered their highest-ever earnings as well.

Now recurring profit, as I say, it's up a good double-digit, 10% to $740 million, up from about $673 million in 2024. Net profit was up a similar number, 10% to another record high, $661 million.

Now to a matter that is dear to the heart of many shareholders. The directors approved a final distribution of HKD 0.14 a share. You folks will vote on that at the AGM. And that brings the full year distribution to HKD 0.27 a share, and that's the highest ever on a per share basis that we have ever paid out. And that, of course, fits under our progressive dividend policy where we're committed to increasing the per share amount of money we distribute to shareholders every year apart from special circumstances.

As you can see on the middle chart here on the right-hand side, the increase in recurring profit was driven mostly by MPIC and Indofood, and there were little declines at PLDT and PLP. Head office cash flow, as you can see, we had about HKD $311 million of dividend income, and there are the distributions gone out to you folks. That's the biggest amount of money sent out. And then the net cash interest expense follows. And if you look deeper into this book or want to discuss it later, you'll see that our interest bill is declining along with the interest amount that we're paying.

Over on Page 6, a little bit more detail on our cash flow and balance sheet. As you can see here, at the present day, we have no borrowings falling due until September 2027 when our only bond, $350 million becomes due. A $200 million that was due in 2026, as you can see, has been shifted over by 5 years to 2031. Our interest cost is around about 4.6% for the year, and the average maturity is about 3.2 years. And I would guess over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, that 3.2 is going to become a bigger number. Our CFO, Joseph Ng, will discuss that in the Q&A, if you like.

Dividend income there on the bottom left shows that we've been consistently over $300 million in recent years. And very important to us is the interest coverage ratio, as you can see, was 4.5x in 2025. That's up from 4x the previous year, and that is well above our comfort level. Though it must be said, we don't have any plans for that number changing anytime soon on account of additional borrowing by us.

Now I'll wind up the narrative part of this meeting with a quick look at the reason that many people are invested in First Pacific. As you can see from 2018 to 2025, we've had over a doubling of our profit at First Pacific. I think in 2018, it was around $290 million in recurring profit, and we're up to $740 million in 2025.

As you can see, the exchange rates of the rupiah and the peso were down about 11% and 14%, respectively, over that time. And what this does is it illustrates quite vividly the hard currency security of putting your money in First Pacific so that you can secure the gains to be had from the fastest-growing economies in the world, which are described by the IMF over in that bottom right-hand chart, where you can see there's a doubling over the 10 years to 2030 from 2020.

Let me actually very quickly go through the main companies. Indofood had record sales, as I said. Core profit was up just 1% to a highest-ever level. Many of you may have attended their investor briefing earlier today. If you haven't, we can discuss some more about their description of their earnings and predictions for the future, many of which we have put into the outlook for 2026.

To speak briefly about that, there's an inference you can make that 2026 will be rather better than 2025. But of course, we have that devil in the Middle East conflict, which we don't know how it will affect any of us going forward. We can discuss this later on, if you like, but there's pretty high confidence over at Indofood.

Now we're going to flip a few more pages to Metro Pacific, looking at Page 14. Record high earnings, as said before, core profit up 15%. And as you can see in the pie chart, most of it was contributed by the power company, Meralco, which is beginning to see a huge contribution from its still fairly new power generation business. They bought into a very large LNG terminal accompanied by 2 natural gas-fired power plants in Project Chromite. Stanley Yang, who worked on that transaction, can help discuss that later on. It just addresses that generation is going to be a big part of earnings growth at Meralco going forward.

The newly listed water company, Meralco, also was a very big contributor to the earnings there. And then the toll roads, their contribution, as you can see, didn't grow so much as illustrated on the bottom left. And that's because we owned -- in part, it's because we owned a little bit less of it than we did earlier.

Now let's dash ahead to PLDT, which is the biggest telecommunications firm in the Philippines. Service revenues, record high. EBITDA at a record high and the EBITDA margin still very strong at 52%. Core profit rose 1%, actually a similar number to Indofoods. And it was helped for the first time ever by Maya, which is the 38% owned fintech, which has -- it's the only digital bank in the Philippines, which is both owned by a telecommunications firm and has a banking license. It's a very interesting little company, and it moved into profit for the first time during the course of 2025.

And the falling column chart on the bottom right there shows you the usual story. It's data that has been driving earnings growth and fixed line voice, too, in a kind of funny way. There's a big international element there.

Now we'll skip past Maya and over to PLP, which had earnings slightly down. Sales were a little bit down as well. Market share is steady at 9.6%. And as you can see, the monthly average electricity prices are down quite a bit from those powerful period of earnings we had in 2023, and that's really the main driver of how their earnings have gone over the past couple of years. Net debt is absolutely negligible at less than SGD 40 million.

Now over to Page 27, where Philex Mining, which has been operating Padcal for 6 decades, I think, and it's still going strong for another few years until 2028, I believe. You can see that after 6 decades, the grades of gold and copper there in the blue box, they're rather lower than you might want to see.

But if you want to see better turn the page to the Silangan project, which is accelerating towards the opening of commercial operations over the next weeks and months. And you can see that the grades there in the middle box are much, much higher than what we've got going on at Padcal. We're very excited about the prospects for Silangan, and we think it's going to be a good solid contributor to First Pacific going forward and to its parent, Philex.

Now I'm going to end the introduction with a quick dash to Page 52, where I would like us all to pay attention to the second line, China Securities Depository and Clearing. They're probably up at this day, close towards 150 million shares. We have now a third brokerage about to start equity research coverage of First Pacific for Mainland investors. And this has been almost entirely due to the efforts of my colleagues, Sara Cheung, who's here 2 seats away. And these new Mainland investors provide much valued liquidity to the share trading in First Pacific, and we welcome them with open arms.

That's it for the opening narrative. We can move over to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

Jeff, could you unmute and ask your question, please?

Maybe starting with 2 from me. So it is all about dividends first. So I just want to check, the regular final dividends increased 3% year-on-year, which seems to be a little bit muted compared with what we saw in the past. But separately, you also pay a special dividend with respect to Maynilad's subscription shares. So just trying to check whether the regular dividend growth this time is whether a sign of caution on the outlook or whether we are trying to smooth out the total DPS growth down in the next few years, including the specials. So that's the first one.

The second one would be about Indofood payout. I understand the dividend will be decided in the AGM in the next couple of weeks. So just trying to figure out, from your perspective, are you seeing any particular resistance for INDF to raise the dividend payout ratio in the future?

Jeff, you know our CFO, Joseph Ng, he'll deal with the first question, and I'll ask our Executive Director, Chris Young, to deal with the second.

Jeff, it's Joseph here. I think your 3% is only focused on the final, if I'm guessing your question correctly because last year's final is 13.5 and this year's final is 14. But in aggregate, if you aggregate the interim and final last year was $0.255 and this year, it's altogether $0.27 because we paid $0.13 for the interim. So there's a 6% growth, which is not the 3%, so it's not insignificant. But if you add back the so-called special distribution we make as a result of the Maynilad IPO, we pay another [ $0.15 ]. So as indicated, I think we have almost 10% growth against last year's 25.5%. So that's broadly in line with the growth in so-called recurring earnings line from last year's $673 million to this year's $740 million. So it's 10% growth in the recurring, which is a key KPI indicator for us. So broadly in line, regular growth -- regular dividend growth or distribution growth is 6%, but all in, it's 10% growth.

Now with that $0.27 altogether, I think we are paying altogether about $150 million plus. And that also needs to tie to what we disclosed in the cash flow that for 2025, we have $311 million dividend income. So you can see that it's more than half of the so-called gross dividend line that we are returning to the shareholders even without including the so-called special distribution. And then you have the head office overhead and the like.

And remember, Jeff, also starting from 2025 and more heavily in 2026, we need to kind of reinvest some of the money that we have from the dividend from the units and then we invest those money back to PLP to fund its equity requirement for the new gas plant there.

So we try to kind of strike the balance as to what we return to shareholders, which is not a small ratio, which is quite a high ratio. If you take out the head office expenses and interest, we are returning more than 70% of free cash to the shareholders and keep a little bit for our reinvestment into the PLP gas plant. So I think that's the kind of macro thinking behind kind of fixing the final dividend at $0.14 per share and making a total of $0.27 regular and then about 10% growth in aggregate, including a special dividend we paid to the shareholders as part of the Maynilad IPO. So that's on the dividend side.

On the Indofood dividends, maybe Chris could chip in and give us a bit color on that.

Jeff, I think the -- normally, as I think you're aware, it's a discussion with the management there at Indofood. And generally, it's a fairly constructive discussion. I think we would take into account 2 elements in considering that dividend. So I think if you look at John's presentation or you've seen the Indofood results, the recurring profit growth last year for Indofood was 1%. And the outlook at the moment looks reasonable without too much disruption from what's going on in the Middle East. But obviously, there is a bit of uncertainty. So that would be the context to the discussion, what was the underlying growth last year and what is the outlook. But as you yourself noted, that discussion will happen over the next couple of months.

Okay. Now we'll ask Timothy Chau to unmute and ask what he's got to ask.

I have a couple about Middle East first. First, on Indofood. I understand just now management talked about like how the Middle East impact seems to be minimal on Indofood. But I'm just wondering if there will be any implications on the raw material cost because I think over the past year, there reportedly some kind of a raw material price hike that affected the margin. So I'm just wondering if the Middle East, if extended kind of -- being extended event, would that aggravate?

And the second question also about Middle East will be on PLP because if I remember correctly, the electricity price in Singapore could actually be moved as long as the gas price is up. So I'm just wondering if there will be any positive read-through from Middle East on PLP here.

Yes. And my last question is on the PLP project. So just wondering if there is a finalized budget on the potential CapEx spend on the project yet. And just now you mentioned about like how we have already been spending some -- investing some in PLP already on that particular project. Just wondering the time line of the entire CapEx and how it will be in the coming 2 to 3 years.

Timothy, I'll take a stab at the first one and then Stan will help you with PLP. Indofood told us in their briefing this morning that as far as wheat goes, they've got 3 or 4 months of supply on hand, and they see that it looks like there's globally going to be a good crop of wheat better than the previous year in 2026. So they're not too worried about that.

CPO prices are up a bit after rising 10% in 2025 to about IDR 14,100. They're around at the end of the first quarter, IDR 15,000. They are in some not feeling any particular pressure from raw material prices. And as far as the Pinehill businesses in Middle East and North Africa, they have been able to secure their supplies up to now. And there is, as of yet, no particular concern.

PLP, Stan?

Sure. Timothy, just to address your questions on Pacific Light, first on the electricity prices and the impact of the Middle East fuel. And for PLP, it's gas comes from a global supplier, in this case, Shell. And there is some impact in terms of some of the flow in terms of the LNG that's supplied into Singapore, some of the disruption. It's a relatively small portion, a minority. And I would say that at least for the next month plus, there's sufficient supply. But when you get beyond it, there will be some impact in terms of the supply coming in that would typically come from the Middle East. Alternate arrangements are being made. The company as well as other generators who are affected in the market are also in discussions on solutions that would help, including having some of the gas supplied by EMA and being able to run, but also others in terms of the existing contractual arrangements that they can procure in terms of their global supply.

And so we think in terms of certainly the near term, there will be less impact. But as the months go by and if this crisis continues, then some of these alternatives on how the balance of gas will be filled in light of the retail contracts for the company will need to be covered.

When it comes to the project itself, the project itself is looking at starting in 2029. And so the heavy lifting in terms of the construction and so forth is still to come. And so within this year, there would be an expectation of the notice to proceed, which basically kicks off the formal development and projects. And from there, the piling works and then subsequently over the next couple of years, the balance of the plant. And so that CapEx as we would look at it would be spread across the next few years up until the planned operation date in 2029.

On PLP, the rise in gas price, if I remember correctly, I think back in 2023, when the gas price is up, we actually have a higher profit because of the nonfuel margin being higher. So I'm just wondering if this case, given -- I mean, given the case is not as bad as like the lack of supply in gas in the end. So I'm just wondering if there will be any positive read-through for PLP in this case or we are still cautious about our outlook?

I think it's too early to make a call. I think the next couple of months will be critical. I think because the company has a strong position with respect to its retail customers for this year, then there is definitely visibility, but the impact of any supply disruption, not just for our company, PLP, but also for the entire market in Singapore. The question will be the balance of any gas that comes from the affected markets, for instance, Qatar and how that would impact the entire supply.

As I mentioned before, that's not the majority of the supply. It's a minority small -- relatively small percentage, but it is one that we are monitoring because that clearly, the supply in aggregate into the market has to balance with what the generation demands will be for running the plants.

Any more questions, Jeff? I think Jeff has another question. Jeff, please unmute and ask your question.

So maybe switching gear a little bit to MPI, just trying to figure out how should we think about maybe the water Maynilad that business in 2026. So just trying to -- if there's any tariff adjustment, can you remind us over there, but if not, I just want to hear your maybe general assessment on MPI's 2026. That's my first question.

The second would be just talking about the FP Natural Resources, which we usually do not really focus on. Just trying to understand why the loss contribution diminished in 2025? And is there any one-off events there?

Stan?

Sure. On the question of the -- you're talking mostly on the water, was it?

Yes. If we can expect some tariff increases in 2026 following the 10% last year.

This year, it's going to be more muted than the last year in terms of the tariff impact. There have been following the revision -- the revised concession agreement, a series of adjustments over a few years. Those have had the benefit in terms of the flow into Maynilad and the system. This year, it would be 4% though, is the expectation in terms of the tariff adjustment. And the business itself will continue to grow. The supply of water and the management's efforts to improve that. I think they focused heavily on the non-revenue water, which is the losses in the system and bringing that down to levels that the company has not seen ever since our existence in owning the business.

And so for us, that's a big savings that helps improve the cost of the water supply and efficiency in the system. And then the management themselves are focused on continuing to improve that along with the continuation of tariffs as part of their CapEx program, which was agreed as part of the concession agreement that they revised. Those would be the key imperatives to continue to build on that business.

Okay. Thank you. And second question. Jeff, you remind us, please?

Yes, the FP Natural Resources, just trying to figure out what -- why did the loss diminished in 2025 compared with 2024 and just trying to check if there's any one-off events driving the narrow losses or anything happened there? That would be helpful.

Chris?

Actually, maybe I could take that. It's Joseph here. Yes, I mean, that operation -- the sugar operation has -- basically has stopped. And then basically, we are laying off all stock and trying to basically sell the residual assets owned by the operation. I mean, previously, the alcohol operation and then we are in discussion of selling this kind of final set of operating asset, refinery asset with certain investors, certain buyer. So with that, actually, the scale of the operation basically stopped. So that's the reason why you see the recurring profit line, there's actually no -- without any significant amount there.

But we do make some impairment provision as a result of selling those refinery assets that I mentioned because now we have identified buyer, we're in final discussion with the buyer. So we know that the final selling price of the refinery part is lower than the book value. So there's certain impairment provision mix below the line under the nonrecurring item. But above the line, there's basically no operation anymore, no significant operation. That's why you see there is very little impact to the recurring profit line.

Just -- I would just want to take the chance to just have one more quick follow-up or just other question. So just I want to hear our plan for refinancing the head office borrowings. So John mentioned we have refinanced the repayable loan in 2026. And just trying to figure out how do we think about the current maybe the head office net debt, cash interest coverage ratio and also our maturities schedule down the next maybe 2 years.

Yes. As mentioned by John, we finished the refinancing of the January 2026 bank loan. We actually signed up the commitment before the end of last year. So we just draw the facility and paid off the bank loan in early January. So that's all done as far as 2026 liability management initiative is concerned. So the next one coming up from this bar chart is the bond, $350 million bond due in September 2027. Now we still have, as of today, maybe 18 months to go. So it's still early, but as part of our usual prudent financial management, we are actively looking into that and talking to a number of banks. We are getting proposals on, say, refinancing the bond with another bond. So we have received quite a number of proposals with different quotes.

Now we are not in a rush to say because the whole market is so volatile. You probably understand from the market that actually both the bond investor side and many issuers are actually waiting on the sideline to see how all these Middle East crisis will turn out and how that would affect the interest rate environment in the next 6 to 9 months.

And for us, I think the plan is that we have 18 months to go, but we should get ourselves ready probably when we get into the second half of this year. We will probably kind of accelerate a little bit on the preparation process and see what will be the revised kind of terms and pricing that we could get from the different banks. And in parallel, of course, we will try to explore other alternatives like syndicate bank loan if we think that those terms and pricing are more attractive. But of course, I mean bank loans will not give you the tenor that we could get from the bond market, the 7 or 10 years.

As you can see from the debt maturity profile here, if you get another 5 years, probably you get into the 2021, 2022 space, which may be a bit clouded. So our preference will be still a bond. For one, the tenor; two is to diversify the credit resources so that we don't 100% rely on the bank financing. So that's the initial thinking because we always try to strike a better balance between the bank credit resources and the bond credit resources. So the preference is to go for a bond if the market is there and if the terms and pricing are palatable to us, but we never say never. We just wait until the whole market comes down a bit and the whole bond market becomes active again.

Maybe can I have a real quick follow-up? I promise, this is my real quick. So just as of the end of 2025, I think you disclosed 54% of the debt is on a fixed rate basis at the head office level. So is this split some sort of optimal in your opinion? Or should we be targeting more fixed rate borrowings as we think for the next maybe 3 to 5 years, given the volatile interest rate environment, sometimes we rate cut, sometimes the expectations just bounce around. So just trying to figure out the thinking here.

Yes, Jeff, these are difficult questions because the interest rate environment is actually shifting back and talk and sometimes they say, I mean there will be one interest rate cut this year and followed by 2 next year and now they are maybe shifting a little bit, given the fact we will be shifting the position, maybe not 2 rate cuts in 2027, maybe 1. I mean all these are subject to changes since the whole market is so volatile. So with that sort of volatile situation, it's really difficult to say that we should increase the hedge ratio to a higher level or we reduce it. As of now, I think we are quite comfortable with what we have. We're probably 50% thereabout because you can't win all and you will not lose all as of now. That's what I can say for now.

Okay. And I believe, Timothy, please unmute and ask your question.

Yes, sorry. Management, it's me again. Just a really quick one on potential corporate events. I think this year, a lot of different conglomerates have been -- the theme has been capital recycling, unlocking asset values. I'm just wondering, given our very diverse and broad portfolio, are we -- do you have similar stuff that the management is looking to maybe divest some kind of non-core or at least partially divest like an IPO, for example, like a Maynilad kind of thinking to really unlock the asset value and maybe pocket some kind of funds as well.

Especially, I think I've read somewhere in the news about potential IPO or list or private placement for Maya. And like back in the days, I think there were also some market chatters about the private placement for MPTC back then to help relieve the financial issues for the total assets. So I'm just wondering is there anything regarding corporate events that the company is thinking about now?

Certainly, as a holding company, we look at a span of initiatives, both on the M&A side, which you've seen over the last few years and also in terms of capital markets, we raised the example of the Maynilad's IPO. When it comes to, as you pointed out, Maya, it's a business that has improved quite a bit. The growth of both the wallet and then subsequently after that, taking the leadership, both in the merchant acquiring and now in the digital banking side has really pivoted that platform from what was quite small a few years ago to now the leader and continuing to grow rapidly.

Whether this is the year that at this time, a listing could be done, I think we would -- management and the shareholders are always reviewing the strategic options. I think actually an interesting similar case was there was the Japanese fintech recently PayPay that just listed earlier this month. And despite the challenges of the market, Iran and so forth, actually, the price held up quite well. So I think it's fair to say that we will continue to monitor if there is an opportunity. Of course, Maya is much smaller than the one that listed in Japan, but its growth and its trajectory are moving in a very positive direction. And so we would see this as a potential as it continues to grow. Really, the question is in terms of timing. And I would say with respect to other portfolio companies and across the group, I think we continue to evaluate how we can improve the positions of them in their respective sectors. And as and when decisions are undertaken to pursue things more formally, then, of course, we will provide more guidance at that point in time.

MPTC?

I think MPTC, at the moment, the business is continue to focus on delivering this year its projects. They have quite a number of projects within the Philippines that are looking to complete. And so that's really been the focus. Also some of the deleveraging efforts of management because of the acquisitions that they've undertaken in the last few years, those are the principal initiatives looking at partners and some capital into the business to help in terms of the debt reduction of the overall roads. And then with that, we continue to also consider whatever strategic opportunities are to further enhance our position as a platform and the shareholders of our roads business.

Thank you very much, Stan. As there are no more questions and time is getting on, we'll wind up now beginning with a reminder that we will be visiting fund managers in Europe and North America after Easter holidays. If you would like to see us, please get in touch with me or Sara or my colleague, [ [email protected] ]. These meetings have historically been quite worthwhile for the fund managers who see us because we cannot hide our feelings on our face. You'll see us coming in and we'll be feeling really, really good, and that will be important to your perspective towards our company.

And now to summarize how we feel and where we think we're going, I turn now to Chris Young, Executive Director.

Okay. Thank you, John, and thank you for joining us on the call today. The results, as you've seen for 2025 were good and a continuation of the trend that we've seen over the last 7 years or so. However, clearly, the outlook in the short to the medium term is somewhat uncertain. However, I think we remain cautiously optimistic that given the nature of our businesses, which I think are quite defensive given the consumer-facing nature of them, that we will be able to shelter the group really from these uncertainties over the next few months or so.

So we look forward to updating you again on the half year results, which I think are at the end of August 28. So until then, we will keep you informed on a regular basis. And as John and Stan will be visiting Europe and the U.S., hopefully, you will get a chance to meet with them face-to-face before that. So turn you back to Sara.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks again for joining today's online briefing, and you may disconnect now. Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Hello, and welcome to the Deutsche Bank Virtual Investor Conference, dbVIC. This is Zafar Aziz from the Deutsche Bank team. I'm pleased to welcome our next presentation by First Pacific from Hong Kong.

Before I introduce our speaker, a few points to note. Please click on the questions box to ask a question. All of today's presentations are recorded and can be accessed by the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. I'm pleased to welcome First Pacific. Over to you.

Thank you very much, Zaf. I'm John Ryan, Associate Director of the company, and it falls to me among other duties to engage with shareholders in the wider investor community, which is to say I'm called upon for today's presentation.

I apologize that you're only getting our first half results, but the fact is we report only 2 times a year. And you may see if you look deeper into research that our operating companies, many of them are reporting this week and next week with their 9-month numbers.

Now who are these companies? The major ones are listed here. Indofood is the biggest maker of wheat-based instant noodles in the world. And this noodle subsidiary, Indofood Consumer Branded Products is where those are made. That's separately listed as well. In fact, both those companies are listed.

Metro Pacific Investments is a privately held almost 50% owned by us, holding company based in Manila. It controls the biggest electricity distributor in that country, the biggest nongovernment-owned toll road operator in Southeast Asia and it's also invested in alongside First Pacific by Meralco in an LNG power plant in Singapore called Pacific Light.

Now over in telecommunications, we are the biggest shareholder in PLDT, whose mobile phone brand is Smart. They've got about a 50% market share in mobile and slightly bigger in fixed line communications as well. PLDT is the biggest shareholder in Maya. It is the only fintech in the Philippines that is controlled by a telecommunications firm, and it's very exciting. I'll tell you a bit more about it later.

Now over in Natural Resources, IndoAgri is the palm oil plantation arm of Indofood. And Philex Mining Corporation is a copper and gold producer currently operating one rather old mine in the north of Luzon in the Philippines and will next year open a new much richer mine down in the south in a big island called Mindanao. And it's also the biggest shareholder in PXP Energy, that's an oil and gas exploration firm.

Now how does this all look in the basket of assets that we own. As you can see, as of the end of September, our just over 50% of Indofood, almost 50% of MPIC, about 1/4 of PLDT, et cetera, all of those stakes added up to just over $5 billion with their individual values there in the pie chart, as you can see, Indofood, $1.9 billion.

Geographically, most of our assets are in the Philippines, just over half. And the one Singapore asset is PLP, and that's 7% of them all and then Indonesia is the remaining 38%.

Now why are you listening to me today? Well, let's hope it's because you know that we deliver access to emerging market growth in Asia from the security of a mature market listing. We're listed in Hong Kong. As you saw 2 slides back, our investments are spread across a variety of defensive assets and they're located in some of the world's fastest-growing economies.

Now by defensive assets, I mean assets that are going to suffer less in an economic downturn than others. For example, if we were a maker of jewelry and we're in a recession, our earnings would fall rather more than if we're operating toll roads and telephones and things, which people continue to use rather more during a downturn.

Now our Hong Kong listing, at least for U.S. dollar investors, eliminates foreign exchange share price risk because the Hong Kong dollar has been pegged to the U.S. dollar since October 1984 at a rate of HKD 7.8 to the U.S. dollar. Now of course, while there's some foreign exchange risk in the contribution from our investments and their earnings, there is none if you're a U.S. dollar investor into our share price.

Now we've got a discount to net asset value, which is a quite interesting topic we'll discuss later. And we have a quite low price-to-earnings ratio, particularly in comparison with our peers. And these 2 together, I think, make us fairly attractive and a safe value proxy for growth in the emerging markets of Asia.

Now how do we do our business? We stick to the one geography. The senior management of First Pacific and the companies we're invested in are very, very familiar with Southeast Asia, and that's where we're sticking where we know the customs, we know the regulatory regimes and we have experience.

We invest in industries we know. We're not going to go investing in automobile manufacturing, you can be assured. We will just stick to what we know. And we really prefer great big companies or monopolies such as toll road operators or the water company that we control via MPIC. And we'd like to have a majority investment in our assets or at least very big stakes so that we can be confident about our influence over the businesses, how they operate, the financial strategies and of course, because we're an investment holding, the cash flows.

Now over the past few years, this strategy seems to be working. The past 4 full year earnings reports, our recurring profit, hit successive record highs. And in the first half of this year, you can see the profit was more than the profit we earned in the entire year of 2020. So that bodes pretty well for our full year numbers, which we will report in late March 2026.

Now one benefit of investing in First Pacific is we have a progressive dividend policy. This means simply that our intention is, over time, to give you more money on a per share basis from year-to-year. Last year, the full year distribution was a record high on a per share basis. And the idea is every year, we will give you a little bit more than we gave you the previous year. Now of course, there are caveats. This policy is dependent on financial performance and funding needs of our company.

Now a quick look at the first half numbers. As you see, the FY numbers for 2021 to 2024 were successive record highs, and we showed pretty strong growth in the first half of 2025 with contribution up 8% and recurring profit, up a bit more, 11% because we managed to keep head office costs a little bit down.

The last bullet point here is probably quite important. We are confident of continuing earnings growth in the medium term. We are invested in defensive companies in the fastest-growing markets of the world. And that implies over the medium term, our earnings will grow, and we're very excited in our confidence about that.

Now the difference between first half 2024 and this year in the contribution and profit are displayed right here. As you can see, the biggest contributor by far is MPIC, Metro Pacific Investments Corp, and we'll be discussing in detail about that just a bit later.

Now let's turn to balance sheet and cash flows and so on. The chart here on the left, the column chart shows our dividend income over the past 5 years. And as you can see, 2023 was a record high when our Singapore power company, PLP, began contributing dividends to its 2 shareholders for the first time. Our dividend income remained quite high again in 2024, and we're confident about the level of dividend income going forward.

We do have borrowings. Our gross debt is something like $1.4 billion. And as you can see, the bulk of it is in bank loans. We've got one bond of $350 million. But we've got close to a 50-50 split between fixed interest rate borrowings and floating interest rate borrowings. We do like a 50-50 split there, which suggests that when our $350 million bond matures in September 2027, we will by then have been looking for a means of replacing it. We could replace it with 1 bond or with 2 bonds. But if the long-term interest rate outlook doesn't look like what we want, then we might go to pure bank borrowing for a little bit.

January next year, we've got $200 million falling due, and that $200 million has already seen its refinancing secured. That happened shortly after we reported our half year numbers. So it's not reported there. As you can see, we've got a fairly long maturity profile with some empty gaps from 2030 to 2033.

We have investment-grade credit ratings from Standard & Poor's and Moody's, and that helps with borrowing costs and makes discussions with lenders very straightforward.

Now let's go to our single biggest holding, Indofood. As I said, it's the biggest instant noodle maker in the world, at least of wheat-based noodles. And noodles make up, as you can see here, 46% of all the revenues at Indofood. It's followed by Bogasari, that's its flour and pasta division and then by dairy. And the green bit is the plantations division where the palm oil business is, which has oils and fats business as well, producing margins in cooking oils and things like that.

Indofood is so important. It's getting 2 slides. Look at the growth of its sales over the past 14 years or so from IDR 40 trillion up to well over IDR 100 million. And if you can hear, like I do, the neighbor's little dog, I apologize, it is a very cute animal.

Now let's go over to the EBIT margins in the blue box here. Remember, noodles, almost half of all sales have quite strong margin, around 25% EBIT margin or better. Now it's been a difficult 2025 for the Noodles business and the rest of the Consumer Branded Products businesses, which are in the top part of that blue box, because commodity prices have been a bit high. And you can tell because Bogasari and the Agribusiness saw a nice bump in their EBIT margins.

So commodity prices, they give and they take away. They give to the flour and plantation businesses sometimes and they take away at the same time from the ICBP businesses. Nevertheless, let me remind you, since 2011, revenues at Indofood have been on successive record highs, and I don't think that's going to change much in the near future.

Okay. Let's go over to Metro Pacific Investments. This company was listed in the Philippines up until October 2023. So that's just over 2 years ago when we and some other investors privatized it. We privatized it because we thought it was super good value. And as a private investment, it could focus more on investing for growth and pay less attention to quarterly earnings reports, which it had been obliged to do while a listed company.

Now if you go to our website under the Investor Relations section, you'll find our way to investor presentations, which are much bigger and more thorough than this simple slide show that we're looking at there. There's a lot of detail about MPIC. But in any case, as you can see, it's the biggest electricity distributor in the country. MPIC owns 48% of Meralco. And in the Toll Roads business, we've got 93% of the mother company, Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation, and via that, we've got stakes ranging from 23% and higher. The 23% here refers to our investment in Jasamarga, the Trans-Java toll road, which is about 700 kilometers, a bit less, running across Java, the big island in Indonesia, connecting the wealthiest cities there.

Maynilad is the biggest water producer -- water company in the Philippines by number of customers, and it is going to be listed later this month on the Manila Stock Exchange. They've had an IPO and reports are it's going pretty well.

Now in health care, we privately own with other investors, 29 hospitals. So we're the biggest private health care business in the Philippines through Metro Pacific. We've got 20% of that. The other shareholders are GIS of Singapore and KKR. And MPIC has got some other investments, much smaller than these 4 big ones, such as Light Rail in Metro Manila and a small water business on the side and so on. We can discuss that in the Q&A, if you like.

Now as you can see in the column chart here, the earnings at MPIC have been growing very, very strongly over the past few years, again, like First Pacific from record high to successive record high. And the pie chart shows you on the left-hand side there that the big contributor is the power business followed by water and then toll roads.

Now the power company, Meralco, when we invested in it about 15 or so years ago, it was really just an electricity distributor. In recent years, it's been building out an awful lot of renewable and natural gas power and electricity production is becoming an increasingly important source of earnings at Meralco with new power plants coming online all the time. Again, turn to our much bigger investor handout on our website or in the Q&A to discuss how that's going. So we see earnings growth there pretty strong over the years ahead.

Now let's turn to the biggest phone company in the Philippines, PLDT, formerly known as Philippine Long Distance Telephone. As you can see, it's got 3 main business: enterprises, data centers and so on. Home is going to be home modems and home phone lines and individual is their name for their mobile phone business. Individual, as you can see, is the biggest.

Their earnings have been fairly steady over time. They haven't been rockling ahead like Meralco or MPIC or even First Pacific, but they've been steady. And it's important to us because they historically have been paying 60% of their core profit to shareholders year in and year out, and it's an important source of cash for us. And it's the biggest shareholder in Maya, that fintech I mentioned earlier.

Now let's go to Pacific Light. That's our power plant operator in Singapore. It built the first LNG-only liquefied natural gas as a sole fuel power plant several years ago, about 12 years ago. And now it's got a second power plant, 100-megawatt fast-start, natural gas-powered plant, which can be turned on when the market needs a big boost of electricity. And it is building out a new 670-megawatt project which they say is hydrogen-ready, and we're hopeful that will go online in early 2029.

As you saw earlier on the dividend income page, PLP has become an important source of dividends, and that new power plant will maintain its status as an important source of dividends for First Pacific and its other shareholder, which happens to be Meralco, by the way, just the 2 shareholders.

Pardon, I don't know that's that, pardon. Now as you can see, those core holdings, PLP, PLDT, Metro Pacific, Indofood, they're giving us lots of confidence in continuing earnings growth largely based on the economic growth forecast in the markets that we operate in. It won't be uncommon for you to see us reporting record high earnings from time to time. As you can see, we've had 4 successive highs of record high earnings, thanks to the continuing contribution growth from our assets.

Now we're small relative to other holding companies listed in Hong Kong. Our market cap is something like $3.5 billion, whereas there are others who have market caps of upwards of USD 10 billion or even USD 20 billion.

Now our price-to-earnings ratio is less than 5x, if you look at your Bloomberg screen. So we're confident, notwithstanding enormous share price growth in the past almost 3 years that we've got a lot more runway to go.

Now we do have, in addition to these factors, further potential catalysts for share price growth. And that's a continuing strong price for gold as our mine Philex, I'll talk about that in a minute, opens the Silangan mine next year. Unlocking value in the fintech platform, Maya Bank, is growing enormously, and it's already profitable. And then there's a potential revaluation of MPIC.

Now the Silangan mine opens next year. The currently operating mine Padcal shows the richness of gold and copper in that top blue box on the left-hand side. As you can see, it's only 1/5 of a gram per metric tonne of ore of gold. So that's not a lot of gold per tonne. Now if you look in the other 3 columns in that box, Sta. Barbara I and II and Sta. Barbara Kalayaan, they've got much richer reserves of gold. Look, over triple 0.7 at Sta. Barbara I, triple at Sta. Barbara II and 2.5x bigger at Sta. Barbara 2 Kalayaan.

And there are similar increases for the grade of copper in terms of percent in those new deposits. So we're very excited about that. As you can see in the bottom of the box, production starts low at about 2,000 tonnes a day. By comparison, the currently operating mine at Padcal is about 18,000 tonnes a day of less rich ore. So once that gets online, that could be a nice catalyst for earnings growth at First Pacific. And if you have the ability to invest in Manila listed assets, the stock that is PX.PM (sic) [ PX.PS ]. I quite like this company a lot, and it could be a catalyst for us.

Now Maya, it's a fascinating little company. It is the sole fintech in the Philippines, controlled by a telecommunications firm, and it was ranked #1 consumer fintech app. As you can see in the left-hand graphic, it's had enormous growth in the number of bank depositors, about 8 million now, 8.2 million. And deposits at the end of June were just over PHP 50 billion. And as you can see in the right-hand graphic, half of that money was being loaned out, about PHP 25 billion.

Now the net interest margin, have a look at how it's changed over 2.5 years there, from 7% in 2023 to just over 20% in the first half of 2025. Now net interest margin is generally the difference between the interest you give your depositors and interest you charge your borrowers. And the reason you've got net interest margin so high is there are multiple factors there. First is these are generally very short-term loans. They're on the order of 30 days most of the time. And it's with borrowers who are not very well understood. The banking industry in the Philippines is not nearly as developed as you might see in the United States and more developed markets. It is estimated that maybe half or up to 70% of Filipinos don't have bank accounts at all.

Now who are the customers at Maya? 85% of them are millennials and Gen Z and 60% of the borrowers see Maya as their only bank. So while Maya is very, very small with less than PHP 600 million in net income in the second quarter, there's enormous scope for growth as it expands its customers who -- and you know banking relationships, they're sticky. I have the same bank account I had when I was in university.

And now finally, valuation of MPIC, as you can see in this blue box here. We value MPIC at the price it was privatized at 2 years ago in 2023. Our 49.9% of MPIC is worth about $1.3 billion by that measure. Now there are 2 brokerages whose equity analysts cover First Pacific, and that is Citi and CLSA. If you don't know CLSA, it's Hong Kong-based, and it's famous for the quality of its equity research on Asia-based companies, particularly those in China. It was founded, I think, in the 1990s and grew enormously, and they are regarded quite highly. But look at how these 2 brokerages value MPIC, almost triple our valuation of MPIC.

So when you get down to a per share basis, at the end of September, we saw our NAV discount was about 7.4%, whereas if they increase the value of MPIC the way they do, they see that, no, your NAV discount is much, much higher.

Now in the fullness of time, we will be changing how we value MPIC because if you consider First Pacific's economic interest in just one of MPIC's assets, Meralco, our economic interest in that $10 billion company is about USD 2.5 billion, already much bigger than how we value our entire half of MPIC, along with the water company and the toll road. So I imagine it's just a question of time, though we don't know when that might be.

So in summary, our core holdings promised steady earnings growth in the years ahead. I hope I've made that clear. We can discuss in detail in the Q&A, which is about to start. We're committed to a progressive dividend policy, which is in 2024, meant record high per share distribution to our shareholders. And I was -- as a shareholder, I was very pleased by that. And I've just described we've got potential upside catalysts in Maya, revaluing MPIC and Philex.

Most importantly, we're quite confident in the future. If you're a regular reader of the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook, you'll see some foundation for our confidence. Now here's the fine print. We really believe and are confident in what we're telling you here. But I might have made a factual error or something like that.

Now let me put on my glasses because we've got about 5 minutes left for a few questions. And if I don't get to your question and you want to continue the dialogue, please e-mail me. I'm [email protected].

Now here's the very -- oh, no, no a lots of questions. One question is about how we're deploying AI to enhance our water solutions. Quite honestly, I don't know. Drop me an e-mail. I'll go to Maynilad, I'll ask them and come back to you on that.

Which portfolio holdings are expected to be the most significant contributors to future earnings growth? And are there any business we expect to divest or restructure? These indeed are excellent questions. And I would think that MPIC's contribution growth is going to continue to be important, so will Indofood, so will PLDT -- I'm sorry, PLP, the power plant in Singapore. And PLDT is really just flattish, we expect in the years ahead. Except, of course, for the wildcard, the contribution it will be getting from Maya as Maya continues to grow.

What might we divest or restructure? Well, Maya eventually will want to go towards IPO. There has been talk in the media about our Toll Roads business also wanting to go to IPO. We don't have any timetables for those, however.

The big difference between the realized and market prices of gold and copper that we're getting over at Philex. These prices when they're reported on a quarterly basis, are averaged over time, and they include a little bit of hedging. That's the short answer to that.

How are we prioritizing capital allocation between mature and new growth ventures? Thank you very much for answering -- for asking this question because it reminds me to inform you of something I have not. And that is most of the capital allocation occurs down below First Pacific at a subsidiary or associate level. So for example, Indofood makes lots of CapEx on expanding its noodle production capacity, which I think is about 37 billion packets a year. That's a lot of noodles.

Likewise, with the Toll Roads business and Meralco, they're using their own sources of cash and bank funding or bonds or whatever. And please be clear, when these companies are raising money, none of their borrowings are guaranteed by First Pacific and there is no recourse to First Pacific.

In the next few years, the only big capital allocation that we've got apart from distribution of dividends to our shareholders is our participation in that new power plant project by PLP in Singapore. And that's it. It's a little bit dull, but First Pacific really is the safe, secure value access to the growth in emerging Asia. So that's where the CapEx spending is mostly going to be.

Now someone is talking about us on the OTC Pink Limited market and are we considering to remain on this? Are there future plans for the OTCQX? Yes, I'm sorry about that. You can only get us on pink sheets if you don't have access to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. And I'm afraid we don't have any plans to change that because if you look at our investor handout over on our website, you will see that almost half of our shareholders are in the United States, and we don't see enough upside for the greater reporting requirements that we would have to have by getting, say, a full-fledged ADR in the U.S.

Growth in our water purification business and time line for spin-off IPO. Water purification, well, the water provider, Maynilad has its IPO later this month. I hope that answers this question.

Progressive distribution policy. Could I elaborate on that continuing the -- continued decline in payout ratios? Yes, you've been looking at our investor handout, which shows indeed the ratio of our distribution as a proportion of our profit has been declining in recent years. And if you've known us really well, you will remember that once upon a time, we had a policy of paying out 1/4 of our profit -- recurring profit to shareholders.

I've got less than a minute, so I'm going to talk quickly. Simply, our profit growth is faster than our cash income growth. So we've had to abandon that. You probably can expect to see a continuing decline in the payout ratio. But in strict dollar terms, you'll see that over time, the dividend will be increasing.

All right. Let me try very quickly one last question. Sustaining margins and profit growth amid rising input costs and competition. Well, most of our businesses are monopolies or the biggest in their industries, at least locally, so this gives them some kind of power.

Now thank you very much for listening to me, [email protected]. Thank you very much.