Quick Read
- SGV resigned as PLDT’s independent registered public accounting firm on October 31, 2026 after deciding it was not independent under US SEC and PCAOB rules, ending an engagement that began in 2002.
- The PLDT auditor resignation moved only the Philippine audit, because Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines took the PFRS statements on November 2 while PLDT has not named an IFRS auditor.
- SGV has withdrawn its opinions on PLDT’s IFRS statements for 2024 and 2025, so PLDT’s US-listed shareholders are reading numbers with no auditor behind them.
- PLDT says the revisions found so far are not expected to materially change net income, earnings per share, or cash flows, so the cost to PLDT is delay and credibility.
Two days after SGV told PLDT it was out, Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines was in, but the swap covers only half the job. The PLDT auditor resignation left PLDT’s Philippine-standard audit with a new firm and its US-facing audit with no one.
The PLDT Auditor Resignation Moved Only the Philippine Audit
SGV notified PLDT on October 31 that it was resigning as the company’s independent registered public accounting firm. It had audited PLDT since 2002. PLDT’s Audit Committee accepted the resignation and appointed Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines, the Philippine member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, to audit the company’s statements under Philippine Financial Reporting Standards, effective November 2.
That appointment stops there. PLDT’s statements under International Financial Reporting Standards, which go into the annual report it files with US regulators, still need an auditor, and so does its internal control over financial reporting. The Audit Committee said it is identifying one and will disclose the appointment when it is made. No date was given.
The two audits are separate engagements with separate readers. The Philippine audit serves local regulators and the US audit serves the US filing. One firm can hold both, as SGV did. After the PLDT auditor resignation, one firm holds the Philippine piece and nobody holds the other.
SGV Says Its Independence Was Impaired From the 2025 Opinions Onward
SGV told PLDT it concluded that its independence was impaired when it issued its fiscal 2025 opinions, and that the impairment continues. Those opinions, dated April 27, 2026 and covering PLDT’s IFRS statements and internal controls, had already been withdrawn in August, when PLDT disclosed a material weakness in its hedge accounting controls.
PLDT did not say what impaired SGV’s independence. It reported no disagreements with SGV over accounting principles, disclosure, or audit scope, with one exception. SGV could not finish evaluating how the hedge accounting error and other revisions affect the earlier statements.
That exception is why the 2024 opinion went too. On October 31, SGV withdrew its opinion on PLDT’s fiscal 2024 IFRS consolidated statements because it could not complete that evaluation, based on information that reached it after the 2025 opinions. The filing ties the 2024 withdrawal to the unfinished evaluation, not to the independence finding. When issued, neither the 2024 nor the 2025 opinion was adverse, disclaimed, or qualified.
SGV’s letter to the US SEC agrees with the resignation section of the filing and says it has no basis to agree or disagree with the rest.
Two Years of IFRS Opinions Now Have No Auditor Behind Them
PLDT Says the Earnings Impact Is Not Material
PLDT identified a material weakness in its internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2025, tied to how it accounted for certain structured hedge arrangements. The errors involved the treatment of net fair value losses on cash flow hedges. An Audit Committee review, run with independent counsel and accounting experts, is under way, and PLDT plans to amend its 2025 annual report.
PLDT says the revisions found so far are not expected to materially affect net income, earnings per share, or cash flows, and it does not expect further revisions to be material. That is PLDT’s own assessment. SGV did not finish evaluating it, and no successor IFRS auditor has been named.
The Amended Filing Waits on a Firm Not Yet Named
A corrected annual report needs audited statements behind it. With SGV gone and no IFRS auditor appointed, the PLDT auditor resignation leaves the corrected figures with no one to audit them yet. PLDT’s US-listed shareholders feel it first, because the numbers they rely on lost the opinion that backed them. Anyone else who reads PLDT’s IFRS statements is in the same position.
Isla Lipana Gains a Mandate but Not the Harder Seat
Isla Lipana’s gain from the PLDT auditor resignation is the Philippine mandate. Nothing in the filing says it will also take the IFRS seat, and PLDT treats the two appointments separately. That seat is the harder one. Whoever fills it inherits 2024 and 2025 statements whose earlier opinions are withdrawn, a material weakness still being remediated, and a hedge accounting review that SGV left unfinished. Only firms registered to audit US-listed companies, and free of conflicts at PLDT, can take it. The filing names none.
The Philippine Opinion’s Status Is Unconfirmed
In August, PLDT told the Philippine Stock Exchange that SGV had not withdrawn its opinion on the 2025 audited financial statements filed with the Philippine SEC in Form 17-A. The November 2 disclosure attaches the US filing and does not repeat that statement. Whether the Philippine opinion still stands after the PLDT auditor resignation is not in the filing. PLDT has not said, and the new PFRS auditor now sits on top of a 2025 audit that SGV signed and then left.
PLDT moved its Philippine audit to Isla Lipana in two days and left the US audit unclaimed. SGV’s exit left the risk with PLDT’s US-listed shareholders, and the amended 2025 annual report cannot carry an audit opinion until the IFRS seat is filled. What moves first is that appointment, because the amended filing waits on it.
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