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| https://www.philstar.com/business/2026/08/12/2548601/cebu-pacific-bleeds-p59-billion-loss-h1/ |
Just when things were looking up, the Iran war caused fuel prices to skyrocket thus wiping out any gains.Low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific is feeling the pain of price hikes, especially in jet fuel, as it saw its net loss worsen to nearly P6 billion in the first half.
Based on its financial report, Cebu Pacific’s parent Cebu Air Inc. incurred a net loss of P5.89 billion in the six months to June, a reversal of its P8.97-billion profit a year ago.
Cebu Pacific grew its revenue by eight percent to P68.56 billion, buoyed by an across-the-board growth in passenger, cargo and ancillary segments.
Cebu Pacific’s passenger revenues went up by seven percent to P47.24 billion, as it flew close to 14.5 million guests during the period. The airline’s ancillary earnings also went up by 11 percent to P17.36 billion, while cargo revenues rose by 13 percent to P3.97 billion.
However, these gains were offset by a 23-percent jump in expenses to P68.28 billion. The airline saw its flying operations go up by half to P30.88 billion due to higher jet fuel prices.
It also did not help that Cebu Pacific booked foreign exchange losses of P2.46 billion and higher financing costs of P4 billion for aircraft deliveries and engine purchases.
The bright spot for Cebu Pacific is that it has strengthened its market leadership on local flights, powered by an industry-leading fleet of 102 aircraft.
Based on internal estimates, Cebu Pacific has brought up its domestic market share to 60 percent as of June, from 55 percent a year ago.
Cebu Pacific CEO Michael Szucs said the second quarter has proven to be the most challenging period in post-pandemic years. The period was marked by jet fuel breaching $200 per barrel due to the Middle East conflict.
“The second quarter was one of the most challenging operating environments that we have faced post-pandemic, driven by the unprecedented spike in fuel prices. Despite these external pressures, the demand for affordable air travel remained resilient, revenue continued to grow and we further strengthened our market leadership,” Szucs said.
To expand revenue sources, Cebu Pacific has capitalized on its fleet capacity by lending aircraft to flag carrier Vietnam Airlines from July to September, a lean season for Philippine air travel.
Cebu Pacific is the country’s biggest airline by fleet and passenger size, operating direct flights to 35 domestic destinations and 26 foreign cities.
It was in a quaint, family-owned hardware store in Libertad that a young Michael Cosiquien got his start in construction. It was decades before becoming one of the Philippines’ wealthiest tycoons and cofounder of a major engineering and infrastructure company.
There, near Sta. Clara Church in Pasay, he learned the nuts and bolts of construction in the most literal sense. By the age of seven, he was already assembling fluorescent lamps, repairing Christmas lights and handling nearly every task in the store.
“There, I could do almost anything,” Cosiquien, an engineer by training, recalls in an interview with Sunday Biz.
Everything, that is, except lifting the 40-kilogram sacks of cement.
Now in his 50s, and armed with decades of experience in the unforgiving construction industry, the former Megawide Construction Corp. executive is charting a different course.
Cosiquien now chairs ISOC Holdings Inc., the company he founded after leaving Megawide in 2017. ISOC has interests in property, energy and cold storage.
In 2025, Forbes ranked him the 46th richest person in the Philippines with an estimated net worth of $255 million.
Like the Pasay hardware store, which eventually shut its doors during the pandemic, ISOC had also begun as a family venture focused on cold storage. Cosiquien now wants to turn it into a significant housing developer known for what he calls “affordable luxury.”“We want to be one of the relevant or important developers here,” Cosiquien says. “I’m not really dreaming of becoming the biggest, but we want to be always relevant.”
ISOC’s flagship development is I-Land Residences Sucat, a six-tower condominium complex launched in 2019. Construction began in 2020, just as the pandemic disrupted the property market and forced developers to rethink their projects.But building through crises was nothing new to Cosiquien. He and his De La Salle classmate, Edgar Saavedra, founded Megawide in 1997 at the height of the Asian financial crisis.
Despite the pandemic and the lingering residential property glut, ISOC sees demand remaining resilient. The first two towers at I-Land Residences had been largely taken up, while more than half of the units released in the third tower had already been sold even before construction began.
According to the company, sales volume has grown by 7 percent from a year earlier, while sales value has risen by about 18 percent.
As an added catalyst to that growth, ISOC is allocating around P500 million for residential development this year. Cosiquien estimates each succeeding tower will require investments of nearly P1 billion.
For Cosiquien, affordable luxury is about giving buyers something that is increasingly difficult to find in Metro Manila: space.
At I-Land Residences, vehicles are routed below the main pedestrian level, leaving the ground floor open for people instead of traffic. About 60 percent of the property is devoted to open spaces, along with amenities such as swimming pools, a basketball court, a jogging path and a pet park.
“You only find that in high-end developments,” Cosiquien says. “Space is a luxury. But we made it affordable.”
“Low-cost doesn’t mean low-standard,” he adds.
Units are priced from roughly P3.7 million to P7 million, with typical floor areas of about 24 square meters. Cosiquien says the project is geared primarily toward end-users rather than investors.
All of ISOC’s projects remain internally funded. But will taking the company public eventually be an option for the businessman who helped steer Megawide’s stock market debut in 2011?
“No plans yet,” Cosiquien says. “We’re just focusing on building and growing.”
Even so, ISOC is already preparing to bring its concept beyond Sucat.
I-Land has acquired a roughly 1.5-hectare property along Daang Hari in Cavite, near Vermosa and about 20 minutes from Alabang. Cosiquien says the vertical development is expected to break ground next year.
That planned Cavite community is expected to remain within the company’s affordable-luxury niche.
“We don’t want to serve the rich; they can have five houses,” Cosiquien says. “But those who can afford one, we want to provide them the best.”
After helping build Megawide into the multibillion-peso infrastructure company it is today, and decades after first learning construction in a family-run hardware store, Cosiquien is unsurprisingly building again.
This time, he hopes the structures that bear his imprint are homes within reach of more Filipinos.
The Department of Health could buy its own supplies without having to go through the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management, two DOH officials told the Sandiganbayan First Division on Monday in the graft trial of former Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.
The two were testifying in the case against Duque and former PS-DBM Undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao over the alleged irregular transfer of P41.46 billion in DOH funds to buy COVID-19 supplies.
They said they had no personal knowledge of DOH leadership's decision to transfer funds to the PS-DBM.
The defense questioned the witnesses’ credibility and capacity to speak for the entire agency on its ability to handle the purchase of the supplies involved in the case.
Defense lawyers also argued that the pandemic created an unprecedented demand for medical supplies, which led to shortages that made it difficult for the DOH to procure items.
Bilao acknowledged that procurement became more difficult during the pandemic.
Prosecutors allege that Duque and Lao acted with evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence when they facilitated the transfer DOH funds to the PS-DBM for the procurement of COVID-19 test kits, face masks and other medical supplies.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2286024/richard-gordon-willing-to-testify-in-sandiganbayan-pharmally-trial/amp |
The wheels of justice spin slowly in the Philippines.Prosecutors on Monday said former Sen. Richard Gordon is “willing” to testify in the Sandiganbayan First Division trial related to the Pharmally issue.
The First Division is trying the graft case against former Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III and former Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Undersecretary Christopher Lloyd Lao over the alleged anomalies in the transfer of over P41 billion in Covid-19 response funds.
Of the amount, more than P11 billion of contracts were allocated to Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. for the procurement of face masks, face shields, test kits, and other medical items during the pandemic, getting the biggest amount won by a single pandemic medical supplier, according to Gordon.
Gordon said this developed despite Pharmally being only a months-old company at that time with a paid-up capital of only P625,000 when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
The former senator was the chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee in 2021, which led a probe into the alleged “suspicious” transfer of funds from the DOH to the Procurement Service (PS) of the DBM.
“He’s very much willing,” a member of the prosecution team told reporters when asked if Gordon is willing to testify.
However, the prosecutor said there is no definite date yet as to when Gordon will take the witness stand.
For Monday’s trial, the prosecution team presented two witnesses from the DOH in a bid to prove that the agency could procure medical supplies on its own.
In line with this, prosecutors presented Wafa Bilao of the DOH Central Office’s Health Facility Enhancement Program and Dennis Casimiro of the DOH Health Emergency Management Bureau as witnesses.
Bilao and Casimiro testified that the agency previously purchased medical supplies such as mechanical ventilation and body bags.
Government prosecutors alleged that Duque and Lao “acted with evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence,” noting that the DOH, then led by Duque, should have first determined whether tapping the PS-DBM would expedite the procurement of COVID-19 medical items.
They assert that the DOH, as the procuring entity, had the authority to directly negotiate or purchase essential medical supplies, making it unnecessary to seek the services of the PS-DBM.
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