For the first time, the app most Filipinos use to pay bills will sell pieces of itself to the people using it. Here’s what that offer contains.
Mynt, the company behind GCash, has cleared the two big approvals it needed. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved its registration statement on September 3, and the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), the country’s stock market, approved its listing on September 17. Pricing happens on October 1, and the final offer price is announced on October 2. The public offer period runs from October 6 to 12, and the shares are set to list on the PSE Main Board under the ticker GCASH on October 20.
GCash is reported to have more than 90 million users, around 40.4 million of them active each month, according to figures from the prospectus. Many of the people weighing this offer will be looking at a stock subscription for the first time.
Where the Money Actually Goes
Mynt is offering up to 8.03 billion shares, split into two kinds that work very differently. About 1.61 billion are primary shares, new shares whose proceeds go to Mynt itself; the listing notice says that money will fund the expansion of its digital financial services and product development. About 6.42 billion are secondary shares, existing shares that current shareholders are selling, and that money goes to the sellers. An overallotment option allows up to 1.20 billion more secondary shares if demand is strong.
Most of this IPO, in other words, is existing owners selling part of their stakes to the public. Owners selling down is common in initial public offerings, and it means much of the headline figure goes to the sellers rather than into GCash.
The ₱10 Is a Ceiling
The ₱10 per share figure is a maximum. The actual price gets set through book-building, where institutional investors indicate how many shares they want at various prices and the underwriters settle on a number. Bloomberg reported on September 22 that global funds including BlackRock, Capital Group, and Schroders were lining up at around ₱6.50 a share, and Mynt has since said more than 20 cornerstone investors have committed to cover roughly the entire institutional tranche.
At the ceiling, the offer could raise about ₱92.3 billion including the overallotment, well past Monde Nissin’s ₱55.89 billion in 2021, the current record for a Philippine IPO. Even at the reported ₱6.50, the offer would raise about ₱60 billion, still enough to take the record. The SEC allowed Mynt a reduced minimum public float of 12%, the share of the company that must be available for public trading, because of its expected market value of about ₱669 billion.
For anyone doing arithmetic now, the number that matters is the one announced on October 2. Calculations made before then rely on a price that may change.
The Ways In
The first route is GStocks PH, the stock-trading feature inside the GCash app, run through affiliate broker AB Capital Securities. The PSE has said subscriptions will be available there, and an account has to be opened and verified before it can be used. Investors who already trade through a PSE-accredited stockbroker can subscribe with that broker. Smaller retail investors can also use PSE EASy, the exchange’s electronic allocation system for Local Small Investors; under PSE rules, a local small investor’s subscription is capped at ₱100,000 per offer.
Shares at this price range trade in board lots of 100, so the minimum order is likely to land somewhere around ₱650 to ₱1,000, depending on the final price. If retail demand exceeds the shares set aside for it, subscriptions get scaled back, and an order for 10,000 shares can come back as fewer.
After October 20
Once it lists, GCASH trades like any other stock, at whatever price the market sets that day. That price can sit above the offer price or below it, and first-day gains aren’t guaranteed for any listing, however well known the company.
The broader planning principle this column keeps returning to still applies. Stocks are money that can go down, so they typically come after the basics: an emergency fund and protection for the people who depend on your income, the groundwork that no one else is going to lay for you. Whether a GCASH subscription fits after that is a personal decision, ideally made with the final price in hand and, for larger amounts, with a licensed professional who can look at the whole picture.
What If runs every Monday and Friday: plain-language financial education for Filipino families, not investment advice or a pitch.