On December 16, 2022, PLDT announced that it had overrun its budget by PHP 48 billion (equivalent to $866 million) for broadband and data projects over the past four years and that it was undertaking a management reorganization process and has initiated improvements on its processes and systems to address weakness that allowed such budget overruns to occur. Then on December 18, 2022, Bloomberg published an article that stated “[t]he Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an inquiry into the 48-billion peso ($866 million) capital spending budget overrun at PLDT Inc. that triggered a record plunge in the stock amid questions over its corporate governance and fiscal control.” The Bloomberg article added “[t]he budget overrun is almost equivalent to PLDT’s combined 2020 and 2021 net income.”

On this news, PLDT’s American depositary receipts (ADR) price fell $6.35 per ADR, or 23%, to close at $20.46 per ADR on December 19, 2022, on unusually heavy trading volume.