PLDT’s Voyager secures strategic foreign partners

MANILA, Philippines — Telco giant PLDT Inc. has finally secured foreign strategic partners to invest in its digital innovations arm, Voyager Innovations Inc., after earlier talks with Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. failed, PLDT chairman and chief executive officer Manuel V. Pangilinan said.

“It’s heaven sent, actually,” Pangilinan said, after announcing yesterday that a group of foreign investors is set to invest and acquire a majority stake in Voyager.

“This week, we signed a non-binding, fairly firm and detailed term sheet with certain foreign investors who would take an investment position and management position in Voyager. The term sheet stipulates that we have four weeks with these parties to enter into definitive documentation in respect to their investment and management participation in Voyager,” Pangilinan said.

Pangilinan declined to identify the investors yet, but noted that they are also in the same business as Voyager, which is in fintech.

“Once those definitive documents are signed, two things will happen. Obviously we’ll make a disclosure to the stock exchange and secondly, we will need to file with the Philippine Competition Commission to get this particular investment approved,” he said.

“The discussion so far envisages that this group of investors will take a majority position in Voyager. PLDT is likely to remain the single largest investor in Voyager, but the foreign investors as a group will likely take the majority share,” Pangilinan added.

Should the deal push through, Pangilinan said PLDT’s stake in Voyager is expected to be at around 45 percent.

Pangilinan said the entry of the foreign investors to Voyager would help “reduce the quantum of losses” the company will book moving forward, as well as provide additional cashflow to PLDT because of the fresh injection of funds.

“The immediate effect of this to PLDT is first, it is likely to produce a significant gain to the accounts of PLDT. This will involve as well significant amount of cash to be injected to Voyager. It could fund the operations of Voyager on expanded basis for the next three to four years,” he said.

“Part of the design of this partnership is they would bring into the venture their experience in their own home markets. They would also participate in the planning and in the management of Voyager moving forward,” Pangilinan added.

With the parties agreeing toward an expedited process, Pangilinan said the first draft of the definitive documents may be completed by the end of the week.

Voyager was initially expecting to seal a deal with foreign partners within the first quarter of this year.

PLDT was earlier eyeing Tencent as Voyager’s strategic partner, but talks with the Chinese firm did not progress, with Pangilinan declaring the potential alliance as a “no-go situation.”

Voyager is behind products and services which seek to promote digital access, customer engagement, digital commerce and digital financial services such as PayMaya and Lendr.

Its other offerings are remittance network Smart Padala, PayMaya Business solution which enables enterprises to receive online and card payments; TackThis! which allows merchants to set up an online shop; online marketplace Takatack; and data sponsored platform and customer engagement tool freenet.