By Cliff Venzon | Updated on Jun 09, 2026 at 11:08 AM
Top Philippine telecoms firm PLDT Inc. plans to raise between $300 million and $400 million from the listing of a real estate investment trust for its data center business amid a global wave of investor interest in technology and artificial intelligence assets.
The company told the stock exchange on Tuesday that its board of directors approved the potential listing of a REIT for assets under its subsidiary VITRO Inc., which operates the largest data center network in the Southeast Asian nation.
Proceeds from the REIT listing, targeted for the fourth quarter, will be used to pare down debts, PLDT Chairman and CEO Manuel Pangilinan told reporters. Initial assets to be injected into the REIT are PLDT’s eight data centers with a combined capacity of about 27 megawatts, he said.
The listing plan comes after talks with potential buyers for the data center business fell through, Pangilinan said. “We’re not getting the kind of values we think we ought to get for the data centers,” he added.
In May 2024, PLDT was seeking a valuation “north of $1 billion” for its data center business, before its largest facility began operations two months later.
Read More: Top Philippine Telco Seeks $1 Billion Valuation for Data Centers
Data centers are industrial-scale facilities filled with thousands of interconnected servers, sophisticated cooling systems and massive power infrastructure fueling the AI boom.
Global investors are looking forward to upcoming listings · from SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic as firms tap into investor appetite for AI-related issuances and seek public markets’ funding for ambitious growth plans.
PLDT hired UBS and BPI Capital to assist in its planned REIT listing.