GCash IPO: Will it end the market spell?

The historic and long-awaited initial public offering of GCash operator Mynt comes at a time when the Philippine stock market appears to have fallen into a deep slumber and the economy is crawling at a snail’s pace.

But could the IPO be love’s first kiss for the market and wake it up from its enchanted slumber?

Everyone’s talking about the upcoming IPO. There are naysayers and there are those who are quite enthusiastic about the offering.

The IPO could be a good long-term investment for retail and institutional investors.

GCash has 94 million registered accounts and logged over 40.4 million monthly active users by early 2026, establishing it as the dominant market leader in the e-wallet space with a massive footprint in Philippine digital payments and daily commerce, both offline and online.

Beyond statistics, you can see this almost everywhere – from your friendly neighborhood taho vendor who has a GCash QR code hanging on his aluminum taho buckets, to most jeepneys, tricycles and those tiny stand-alone food kiosks in most university campuses – whether they’re selling fishballs or milk tea.

This foundation makes GCash an attractive investment with strong upside potential.

There is potential to attract more users by activating non-monthly active users and encouraging them to use the app more frequently, which will result in an increase in revenue.

Another plus is that GCash is already part of an existing and wide ecosystem. It is deeply integrated across retail merchants, utility billers and micro-entrepreneurs. It has logged six million merchant accounts in total, the highest number of merchant accounts among other e-wallets.

In terms of financials, Mynt has said that it is the only Philippine company that has been awarded double-unicorn status, exceeding a $2-billion valuation, indicative of the strong financial position and potential of the company.

Mynt’s prospectus shows audited figures of P79.7 billion or $1.4 billion in annual revenue for 2025, significantly better than other e-wallets in the region such as Kakao Pay of South Korea ($670 million), GoPay of Indonesia ($325 million), Atome Buy-Now-Pay-Later ($470 million) and Grab Financial Services ($347 million).

For 2026, Morgan Stanley estimates Mynt will generate P21.2 billion in net income in 2026, maintaining a 22.6 percent net margin and a return on equity (ROE) of roughly 28 percent.

For US-based fund manager Eric Jurado, the most interesting takeaway about Mynt’s IPO is not that it has attracted more than 20 cornerstone investors.

“It is that global institutions are putting their own investors’ capital behind a Philippine company at a moment when they could deploy that capital almost anywhere in the world,” he said in a commentary titled GCash IPO: The signal behind the signal.

He said some investors are even doing so in the Philippines for the first time, which suggests the investment case is being judged on more than GCash’s current size.

“It reflects a belief that the company can continue to grow, that digital financial services in the Philippines have significant room to expand and that the resulting growth can ultimately translate into meaningful returns for shareholders,” Jurado said.

While the cornerstone investors cannot guarantee that outcome, Jurado said their commitments provide something every IPO needs – a powerful early indication that some of the world’s most sophisticated investors see GCash not merely as the Philippines’ largest finance super app, but as a potential long-term Philippine growth and compounding story.

The GCash IPO is doing something we badly need – attracting investors.

“An IPO can raise billions of pesos. But sometimes, the more valuable asset it attracts is something money cannot easily buy: the confidence of sophisticated long-term investors,” Jurado said.

Mynt, the parent company of GCash, has secured commitments from more than 20 cornerstone investors, including some of the world’s largest asset managers.

Among the global investors are BlackRock, Capital Group, Fidelity, HSBC Global Asset Management, Lazard, Ninety One, Schroders, T. Rowe Price and the International Finance Corp., alongside leading Philippine institutions.

Albizia Capital, Amundsen Investment Management and HSBC GAM are making their first cornerstone investment commitment in the Philippines, while Ninety One North America and Ninety One UK are participating as cornerstone investors in Southeast Asia for the first time, Jurado said.

“These investments are not guarantees of success. But they do indicate that global institutions see sufficient long-term potential in GCash to commit their investors’ capital,” Jurado said in his commentary.

GCash’s final IPO price is expected to be determined on Oct. 1 following a bookbuilding process.

Analysts expect the price to be at least P6.60 per share or below.

Lito Villanueva, RCBC EVP and chief innovation and inclusion officer and one of The STAR’s business columnists, said fixating on that number misses what makes this IPO significant.

“This was never really about price. It’s about who gets to own a piece of what tens of millions of Filipinos already use every day,” he said.

GCash, he said, didn’t just digitize payments, it brought a huge share of the population into the formal financial system for the first time.

With all these factors, there are reasons to believe that GCash might be that much-needed kiss to wake up the market.

Email: [email protected]. Follow her on X @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.

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