The Best Solutions Mean Compromise

For the past three years, DigiPlus was the PSE's foremost market darling, mounting a generational rise in an otherwise stale stock market where it has been difficult to make money.

- Ed Francisco Andrew Poblete

From a mere P1.30 per share in June 2022, DigiPlus increased by a whopping 4,900 percent to a peak of P65 per share in June 2025 after leading an industry-altering pivot to the easily accessible online gambling business patronized by many Filipinos through platforms Bingo Plus, ArenaPlus, and GameZone. The rise of DigiPlus to the top was not just driven by hype or manipulation either, as the stock price increase was supported by the company's strong financial performance and fundamentals, with its net income of P686.6 million in 2022 soaring to a staggering P12.6 billion in 2024.

With the very scalable business model of DigiPlus, nobody knew when the stock price would settle or go down. A safe bet would have been that DigiPlus was set to continue its stock price surge into ad infinitum, primarily because nobody knew the bounds of the online gambling industry and the inclusion of DigiPlus in the next recalibration of the PSEi in August as well as planned expansions into Brazil and other countries giving the stock legs for its next run up. Last week, we finally got our answer. Numerous legislation bills filed to completely ban online gambling have sent the DigiPlus stock into a freefall, slashing the company's value by half and trapping many investors who refused to sell or caught falling knives.

The social ills of online gambling

Make no mistake, the widespread concerns over online gambling are warranted. Anecdotes are rife about ordinary Filipinos spending whatever meager income they have into fueling their gambling addiction, with some stories even mentioning jeepney drivers and security guards placing bets while working on the job, posing an immediate danger to the safety of the very people they are responsible for.