SM Investments

SM Investments Corporation (SMIC) is the holding company of the SM Group, the Philippines' largest conglomerate, with interests in retail through SM Retail Inc., property through SM Prime Holdings Inc., and banking through BDO Unibank, the country's largest bank by resources, and China Banking Corporation, plus portfolio investments in logistics, geothermal, food manufacturing, and mining.¹ Forbes dates the company's founding by Henry Sy, Sr. to January 15, 1960, with headquarters in Pasay.² Listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange since March 22, 2005, the group has since grown its malls from 19 to 87, retail stores to 4,470, and bank branches to 2,441, with assets exceeding PHP1.7 trillion.³

What the group owns

SMIC sits at the top of a three-engine structure. Retail is SM Retail Inc., which the company's FY2025 presentation counts at 4,733 stores.⁷ Property is SM Prime Holdings, incorporated in 1994 and 49.7% effectively owned by SMIC, which runs the malls, the SMDC residential arm with 67 primary projects as of end-2024, 22 office buildings with about 1.6 million sqm of GFA, and hotels and convention centers.⁴ Banking is BDO Unibank and China Banking Corporation.¹

Portfolio stakes. Beyond the three engines, SMIC holds 100% of PGPC, 95.0% of NEO Subsidiaries, 71.3% of MyTown, 67.2% of 2GO Group, 64.1% of Goldilocks, 51.0% of Airspeed, 34.1% of Atlas Mining, and 26.6% of Belle Corp.⁷ The portfolio contributed PHP5.5 billion to 2025 consolidated net income, with PGPC and NEO at PHP1.5 billion each (56% of the total) and 2GO and Goldilocks 10% each.¹

By the numbers

The recovery arc since 2023 is steep. Net income rose 25% to PHP77 billion in 2023, then 7% to PHP82.6 billion in 2024 on revenues of PHP654.8 billion, then to PHP90.5 billion in 2025 on PHP681.7 billion of revenues.^{10 • 11 • 5} The SEC filing puts 2025 growth at 9.5% while the integrated report and press release round it to 10%.^{1 • 8}

Revenue versus profit. The segment split shows why the group is often described as a bank with malls attached. In 2025 retail generated 67% of consolidated revenues but only 18% of net income, while banks produced 7% of revenues and 49% of net income; property was 20% of revenues and 27% of income.¹ Within property, SM Prime earned PHP48.8 billion in 2025, up 7%, with malls contributing PHP85.1 billion, 60% of its PHP141.1 billion revenues; in 2024 the split was malls 55%, residences 34%, hotels and convention centers 6%, offices and warehouses 5%.^{5 • 4} BDO earned a record PHP87.2 billion in 2025, up 6% from PHP82.0 billion, with gross customer loans of PHP3.2 trillion, a 71% CASA ratio, and an NPL ratio of 1.83% covered 145%.^{5 • 4} China Bank earned PHP24.8 billion in 2024, up 13%.⁴

Balance sheet. Total assets rose 7% to PHP1.8 trillion in 2025 with gearing of 30% net debt to 70% equity; FY2025 ROE was 13.5% on an 18.2% net margin, and SM Prime's EBITDA was PHP86.4 billion at a 61.2% margin.^{5 • 7} In 2024 SMIC's PHP82.6 billion net income narrowly exceeded BDO's PHP82.0 billion, making it the most profitable Philippine company that year.¹²

How it compares with Ayala, GT Capital, and JG Summit

At end-2023 SMIC was the most valuable listed Philippine family holding company at $21.6 billion, ahead of Golden MV Holdings (Villar) at $11.6 billion, Ayala Corp. at $7.4 billion, JG Summit at $5.4 billion, Aboitiz Equity at $4.9 billion, San Miguel at $4.8 billion, DMCI at $2.7 billion, LT Group at $1.9 billion, and Alliance Global at $1.7 billion.⁶ The company's own FY2025 presentation puts its market cap at $10.5 billion, versus GT Capital at $2.4 billion, DMCI at $2.2 billion, and Ayala Corp. and JG Summit at $3.7 billion each, and shows enterprise-value multiples of 14.6 for SMIC against 6.0 for Ayala, 3.7 for JG Summit, and 2.4 for GT Capital.⁷

Analyst view. A December 2024 Maybank Investment Banking Group study named SM its top pick among Philippine conglomerates for 2025, preferring it because it controls the country's largest bank and largest mall operator and calling SM a "proxy for the PH economy", with BDO forecast for steady loan growth of 12%.¹³ The same study expected Ayala Corp. to grow net income 10.6% year-on-year and flagged headwinds at GT Capital, through Toyota Motor Philippines imports, and JG Summit, through the weak peso raising Universal Robina's raw material and Cebu Pacific's fuel costs.¹³

How much of the Philippine economy SM touches

The group's weight in the stock market is large, though estimates differ. SMIC alone represents roughly 26% of the value of the Philippine Index as of March 2026; an April 2024 analysis put SM's three largest listed companies, SMIC, SM Prime, and BDO, at 33% of the index value; and Manila Bulletin reported in 2025 that SMIC, SM Prime, BDO, and China Bank together represent around 30% of PSE index market capitalization.^{7 • 6 • 3} These figures are not directly reconcilable, since they count different sets of companies at different dates.

In the real economy, Philippine consumption, on which the SM Group's growth has banked, contributes up to 84% of total GDP value.⁶ Philippine conglomerates as a class contributed 6% of GDP in value-added terms in 2018 and consume 14.6% of the country's total intermediate inputs, and the top conglomerates account for more than 91% of PSEi market capitalization.^{14 • 15}

Governance and the Sy family

Henry Sy Sr. died in 2019 at age 94, and the conglomerate is run by his six children, with Teresita Sy-Coson as vice chair.⁶ The SMIC board is chaired by independent director Amando M. Tetangco Jr., a former Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas governor, with Teresita T. Sy as Vice Chairperson, Henry T. Sy Jr. as Vice Chairman, and Frederic C. DyBuncio as President and CEO.¹ Family control is the Philippine norm rather than the exception: scholarship on corporate governance finds the largest 10 corporate groups in the country are family-controlled, and that the Philippines exhibited the highest proportion of large firms under family control among nine East Asian economies.¹⁶

References

1. SM Investments Corporation, SEC Form 17-A Annual Report as of 31 December 2025
2. SM Investments, Forbes company profile
3. Two decades on the PSE: SM Investments' vision for the future, Manila Bulletin
4. SM Investments Corporation FY2024 Annual Report
5. SM Investments FY 2025 Net Income Up 10% to PHP90.5 billion, PR Newswire
6. SMC, SMIC Phl growth drivers, Philstar.com
7. SM Investments: FY 2025 Investor Presentation, March 31, 2026
8. A Year of Growth, 2025 SMIC Integrated Report
9. Sy family's SMIC sees strong growth, net income hits ₱82.6 billion in 2024, Manila Bulletin
10. SM Investments grows net income by 25% to PHP 77 billion in 2023, PR Newswire
11. SM posts 7% growth in net earnings to PHP82.6B in 2024
12. Most profitable company in 2024? SM Investments edges out banking arm BDO by a slim margin, insiderph
13. INSIGHT: SM leading conglomerate in PH; Ayala Corp. not far behind, Current PH
14. Philippine Conglomerates: Their Role in Promoting Inclusive Development, SSRN
15. The Influence of Unrelated Diversification and Ownership Structure on Firm Value, Philippine EJournals
16. Examining Corporate Governance in Asian Family Businesses: Case Study of the Philippines, Asian Pacific Law & Policy Journal

Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026

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