Key Points
- S&P has given a B+ credit rating to DigiPlus, expecting its 40-50% share in the Philippines’ online gambling market in the next two years.
- EBITDA margin to fall to 14.5-16% in 2024-2025, from 18%, due to increasing costs of customer acquisition and retention.
- The regulatory risk in the Philippines has been assessed by S&P as being higher than other comparable countries, due to Senate bills that are active.
A credit rating with a stable outlook sounds reassuring. What S&P Global published on 16 September about DigiPlus is, on its face, a vote of confidence in the Philippines’ dominant online gaming operator. Read past the headline number and a different story starts to emerge, one about costs rising faster than the market notices and a regulatory clock that nobody can set with any certainty.
The Rating and What It Actually Says
The S&P gave DigiPlus an Issuer Credit Rating of B+, which is stable, because it foresees DigiPlus maintaining control over 40%-50% of the Philippine online gaming market within the next two years. It noted the company’s strength in terms of its products, its capability of engaging its users effectively, and its history of being able to adjust promptly to any changes in the policies. DigiPlus maintains a strong market share compared to its competitor, which has 15-20% of it.
What S&P said in the same note, with less emphasis across general coverage, is that EBITDA margins are expected to compress to 14.5-16% over the next two years, down from an average of 18% across 2024 and 2025. Higher customer acquisition and retention costs, S&P said, could weigh on profitability and potentially offset the benefits of lower gaming tax rates introduced in 2023. A rating that opens with a stable market position and closes with a declining profitability forecast is worth reading carefully.
The Share Figure That Quietly Slipped
On one side, there is the projection of 40-50%, but there is an equally noteworthy point that must be made: DigiPlus had already ceded some ground. DigiPlus saw its market share drop from 47% in 2024 to 41% in 2025 due to competition from the new players in the market, as well as land-based casino companies moving into the digital arena. The forecast by S&P is not about standing still for DigiPlus.
Monthly active users recovered modestly in the first half of 2026, reaching 5.75 million in Q2, with Monthly Average Bettors and Depositors rising 26% quarter-on-quarter to 4.68 million. That recovery is real. S&P also noted that monthly active users may not return to pre-delinking levels within the two-year forecast window, which is where the cost pressure enters. Winning back and retaining users in a more competitive, more regulated environment carries a price.
August 2025: The Order That Changed the Numbers
The narrative is one that has a definite before and after. In August 2025, the central bank of the Philippines instructed the e-wallet companies to cut off access in their app to the licensed gambling sites. The impact was felt almost immediately by DigiPlus whose growth up until then had been premised mainly on the ability of users to pay using their mobile phones for services that were available in the e-wallets. Net income fell 59% year-over-year to PHP1.71 billion, revenue declined 23% quarter-over-quarter to PHP19.05 billion, while EBITDA fell 55% to PHP2 billion in the same quarter.
However, DigiPlus managed to bounce back. It reconfigured its payments platform, got rid of third-party access points and was able to recover a bit of its user base during the subsequent quarters. Profitability was improving in Q2 2026 with EBITDA increasing 7% quarter-over-quarter to PHP2.85 billion and EBITDA margin improving from 15.3% to 18.2%. S&P recognised the turnaround but viewed it as partial because the user base and margins could normalise further.
The Philippine central bank separately published a draft proposal in September 2026 on tightening how payment providers assess channels used for casino micro-payments, a distinct and more recent measure that signals the regulatory direction of travel has not changed.
Two Agencies, One Consistent Concern
S&P is the second major ratings agency to assess DigiPlus within weeks. On 11 September, Moody’s assigned DigiPlus a first-time B1 corporate family rating with a stable outlook. Moody’s Ratings Assistant Vice President Yu Sheng Tay stated: “DigiPlus’ B1 rating reflects its leadership in the Philippines’ online gaming market and strong financial profile, underpinned by low leverage, robust cash generation and a net cash position. These strengths are balanced by exposure to regulatory change and intense competition in the Philippines’ online gaming sector. DigiPlus’ growth ambitions in land-based casinos and overseas markets also introduce execution risk.”
Both agencies reach similar conclusions. DigiPlus is financially solid and competitively entrenched, but its single-market concentration and a regulatory environment that moves unpredictably make for a risk profile that sits below investment grade. S&P also flagged execution risk from DigiPlus’ stake in International Entertainment Corp and its overseas market ventures, estimating these could contribute 10-20% of revenue and EBITDA by 2027 while also increasing near-term cash flow volatility.
Regulatory Uncertainty, Priced Only Partially In
According to S&P, the regulatory intervention risk in the Philippines is relatively high compared to other jurisdictions since online gambling was legalised in the country in 2020. The regulation for the sector is already six years old and has delivered at least one payment restriction that reduced the quarterly revenue from online casinos by almost 25 per cent in just one quarter. There are several Senate bills pending that may increase player protection measures or even completely ban online gambling, which is the worst-case scenario according to analysts.
Maybank Securities, in an opinion piece in October 2025, said that a complete ban on online casinos was not likely and that regulated online casinos were a more plausible possibility. From S&P’s opinion, it was clear that the future would involve consolidation of the industry through increased regulation, increased enforcement and the introduction of minimum license fees for casino operators, which will create entry barriers and remove smaller, disadvantaged operators from the market. This leaves the direction in which the legislation will head in Manila as the only thing to wait and see.
Insiders Who Read the Chart Differently
Against all of this, what DigiPlus insiders have done with their own capital is telling. Chairman Eusebio Tanco purchased 63.12 million shares in a transaction on 27 February 2026, spending approximately PHP1.04 billion and lifting his stake to nearly 16%. The Juroszek family, former majority owners of Polish operator STS Group, published an open letter in July 2026 calling on DigiPlus to launch a substantial share buyback programme, arguing the company’s shares were trading at a 2.4x EV/EBITDA multiple at the time, roughly a third of comparable B2C operators globally. “The shares are so far below any reasonable estimate of fair value that buying them back is worth more to shareholders than any other use of that capital we can identify,” the letter stated.
DigiPlus reported PHP10.51 billion in cash and cash equivalents at 30 June 2026, after dividends paid and its investment in International Entertainment Corp. That balance, combined with minimal debt, supports the insiders’ argument that the company has the financial room to act on the valuation gap if it chooses to.
Expert Analysis
We find the S&P note harder to read as straightforwardly positive than the headline rating implies. A B+ rating on a company that holds 40-50% of its only operating market, with a stable outlook, is a reasonable outcome. What sits underneath that verdict is where the real argument lives.
The margin forecast is the part that should create debate. DigiPlus gained significant tax relief from the 2023 gaming rate cuts. S&P’s projection that rising acquisition and retention costs could absorb much of that relief raises a pointed question: what happens to profitability if the company must spend aggressively to hold its user base against new entrants, including well-capitalised land-based casino operators, at the same time as regulators continue to restrict the lowest-friction payment channels?
The balance sheet is strong. The market position is real. The regulatory environment, however, is genuinely unsettled, and we think the market has not fully worked out what a second major disruption, even a smaller one than August 2025, would do to a user base that S&P already says may not recover fully over two years. That is not a reason to dismiss DigiPlus as an investment case. It is a reason to read the fine print of a B+ rating rather than stopping at the letter.
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