Sara Cheung: 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.
John Ryan: 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.
Sara Cheung: [Operator Instructions]
John Ryan: Jeff, could you unmute and ask your question, please?
Ming Jie Kiang: 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?
John Ryan: 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.
Hon Pong Ng: 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.
Christopher Young: 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.
John Ryan: Okay. Now we'll ask Timothy Chau to unmute and ask what he's got to ask.
Tak-Hei Chau: 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.
John Ryan: 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?
Stanley Yang: 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.
Tak-Hei Chau: 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?
Stanley Yang: 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.
John Ryan: Any more questions, Jeff? I think Jeff has another question. Jeff, please unmute and ask your question.
Ming Jie Kiang: 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?
John Ryan: Stan?
Stanley Yang: Sure. On the question of the -- you're talking mostly on the water, was it?
John Ryan: Yes. If we can expect some tariff increases in 2026 following the 10% last year.
Stanley Yang: 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.
John Ryan: Okay. Thank you. And second question. Jeff, you remind us, please?
Ming Jie Kiang: 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.
John Ryan: Chris?
Hon Pong Ng: 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.
Ming Jie Kiang: 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.
Hon Pong Ng: 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.
Ming Jie Kiang: 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.
Hon Pong Ng: 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.
John Ryan: Okay. And I believe, Timothy, please unmute and ask your question.
Tak-Hei Chau: 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?
Stanley Yang: 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.
John Ryan: MPTC?
Stanley Yang: 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.
John Ryan: 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, [ fionachiu@firstpacific.com ]. 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.
Christopher Young: 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.
Sara Cheung: Thanks, Chris. Thanks again for joining today's online briefing, and you may disconnect now. Thank you.
John Ryan: Bye-bye.
