You use it to pay bills and send money home. Starting today, you can also own a piece of it. The public offer for shares of Mynt Inc., the company behind GCash, opened on Oct. 6 and runs until Oct. 12. The stock is set to start trading on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) on Oct. 20 under the ticker GCASH.
It’s the most talked-about listing in years. But a household name isn’t automatically a good buy.
The Deal in Numbers
- Price: P6.60 per share, set on Oct. 1. That’s 34% below the P10 ceiling in the prospectus.
- Size: 8.03 billion shares, worth about P53 billion. If an extra 1.2 billion shares (the “overallotment option”) are sold, it reaches P60.9 billion. That would be the biggest IPO in PSE history, above Monde Nissin’s P55.89 billion in 2021, Rappler and Reuters reported.
- Valuation: About P442 billion (roughly $7 billion), based on about 66.9 billion shares after the offer, Rappler reported.
- Big buyers: More than 20 “cornerstone” investors, including BlackRock, T. Rowe Price and the World Bank’s IFC, committed P36.5 billion, about 69% of the base offer.
- Who owns it: Globe’s investment arm is the biggest shareholder at 33.84%. Ant International (21.44%), the Ayala–Mitsubishi vehicle AM 50 Ventures (13.02%) and MUFG Bank (8.05%) aren’t selling either, Rappler reported, citing the prospectus.
There’s one detail many first-time investors will miss. About 80% of the shares on offer are being sold by existing shareholders, mainly early backers like Bow Wave, Warburg Pincus and Insight Partners. Most of the money goes to them, not to GCash. The new shares bring Mynt only about P10.6 billion before expenses, and 60% of the net proceeds will go to its lending business, according to the final prospectus as reported by BusinessWorld.
It’s been a long road: GCash first talked about being IPO-ready in 2023, filed in June 2026 and got the PSE’s go-signal on Sept. 18.
How Healthy Is the Business?
The scale is huge. GCash had 41.5 million monthly active users as of June. Mynt earned P17.2 billion in 2025 on P79.8 billion in revenue.
But growth has slowed. First-half 2026 profit rose 7.3% to P10.82 billion, Reuters reported. Mynt has disclosed that its payments revenue fell after the Bangko Sentral ordered e-wallets in August 2025 to remove in-app links to online gambling (Philstar). GCash also cut its InstaPay transfer fee to P10 from P15 on July 4, under new BSP pricing rules (GMA News).
What Experts and People Are Saying
April Lee-Tan, COL Financial: “I don’t think it’s a red flag. As you know, the index is quite weak,” she said, putting GCash at around 21 to 22 times 2026 earnings, “at the lower end of the range compared to its global peers” (BusinessMirror, Oct. 3).
Julian P. Tarrobago Jr., Substack (Oct. 6): He says the 34% cut “isn’t a discount”: “think of the tiangge vendor who starts at P1,000 and settles at P660. You didn’t get the shirt 34% off. You got it closer to what it was worth.” His four valuation methods give P2.00 to P14.50 a share, overlapping at P5.20 to P5.70, which he calls the value of “the business Mynt has already proven.” At P6.60, “you’re paying about a peso above that for growth.” His verdict: a fair price for a starting stake, but “it isn’t cheap enough to back up the truck.” He’d start with about a third of a position and add only if results hold up. “Anyone can lend money. Getting it back is the business.”
DragonFi Securities: Senior research analyst Jarrod Leighton Tin said, “At P6.60, GCash/Mynt is less stretched than the original P10 range, but we wouldn’t call it cheap.” He flagged lending risk and added, “A small allocation makes sense for those who want exposure to a landmark listing, but we wouldn’t chase a first-week pop.”
Ramon Monzon, PSE president: With subscriptions open in the GCash app, “we expect to see a significant uptick in new retail investors” (PSE statement, Sept. 18).
Chinkee Tan (YouTube, Oct. 5): He won’t say buy or skip: “Good company does not automatically mean good investment at any price,” and “familiarity is not due diligence.”
Stock Smarts (YouTube, July 10): Owning Globe gives you GCash plus dividends and a stable telco. Buying Mynt is the purer growth bet, with no dividend. Its “biggest mistake” warning: accidentally owning the same bet twice.
Jonathan Ravelas, Reyes Tacandong & Co.: “The market will reward GCash not for how many users it has, but for how successfully it turns those users into long-term, profitable relationships” (BusinessMirror, Oct. 3).
On Reddit: The mood on r/phinvest is cautious, with threads like “Why is GCash IPO not a good buy?” That’s sentiment, not analysis.
Our Take: Fair, Not Cheap
At P6.60, GCash is no longer priced like a fantasy. But it isn’t on sale either.
What’s good: GCash is a profitable market leader, with return on equity between about 26% and 33% since 2023, per prospectus figures cited by Philstar. Big global funds are buying at your price.
What gives us pause:
- Slowing growth. Profit grew 7% in the first half. Lending is supposed to drive growth, but provisions for bad loans already take about 44% of credit revenue, per DragonFi’s analyst and Tarrobago.
- Competition and regulation. BPI and other banks have waived online transfer fees. Maya, GCash’s biggest rival, is preparing its own listing, likely in 2027, and BSP rules can change the math overnight.
- Interest rates. At about 21 times 2026 earnings, GCash “earns” around 4.8% of its price a year. Government bonds pay around 7.7%, Tarrobago notes.
- Few shares trading. Only about 12% to 14% of Mynt will be publicly traded, so prices can swing hard. Existing owners’ 180-day lock-up ends around April 2027.
- Past mega-IPOs. Monde Nissin listed at P13.50 in 2021. It traded at about P6.18 this week.
Who it may suit: Long-term investors who want a piece of Philippine fintech, can hold through ups and downs and are buying with money they won’t need soon. If you already own Globe, you already have indirect exposure. It suits flippers less. Retail orders can be scaled back, and nobody can promise a listing-day pop.
How to Join
Small investors can subscribe through PSE EASy, their broker (COL’s deadline is Oct. 9; DragonFi and Maya Stocks also take orders) or GStocks PH in the GCash app. Minimums vary, from 100 shares (P660) on GStocks to 1,000 on COL. Read the final prospectus on PSE EDGE first.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Do your own research or consult a licensed adviser before investing.
