What happened
DigiPlus Interactive Corp. has appointed Teneo, a global CEO advisory firm, as strategic adviser to support its international expansion. Teneo will provide senior counsel as DigiPlus assesses market conditions, regulatory requirements, and business risk across its overseas operations, which currently span Brazil, where the company is relaunching under the GamePlus brand, and South Africa, targeting a 2027 launch. DigiPlus has also filed an expression of interest for an online gaming licence in New Zealand, whose new regulatory framework opens on December 1, 2026, with up to 15 licences available. If successful, New Zealand becomes DigiPlus’s third overseas market. The Teneo appointment landed less than two weeks after the DigiPlus board approved that New Zealand filing.
This builds on a Singapore-based entity, under parent company Diginvest Holdings, that DigiPlus already established specifically to support international expansion, handling partnership development, talent recruitment, and corporate activities tied to overseas operations. Teneo’s mandate adds external strategic advice on top of that existing internal structure.
Domestically, DigiPlus reported Q2 2026 net income of PHP6.98 billion, up 124% quarter-on-quarter, a figure driven almost entirely by a non-operating fair value gain on the company’s convertible note investment in International Entertainment Corp., owner of New Coast Hotel. Excluding that one-time gain, core net income was PHP2.35 billion, up a more modest 8% quarter-on-quarter, but down 44% compared to the same quarter last year. Gross gaming revenue fell 9% quarter-on-quarter to PHP15.61 billion.
Why it matters
The choice of advisor is worth reading carefully, not overstating. Teneo is not a political-risk boutique, it’s a diversified CEO advisory firm spanning five business segments: strategic communications, financial advisory and restructuring, management consulting, risk advisory, and people advisory, including board and executive search. Geopolitics and government affairs is one line inside that portfolio, not the firm’s defining business. That said, the practice is real and actively growing. Teneo has recently added senior advisors to it with genuine political and intelligence pedigree, including a former head of MI6 and a former US deputy director of national intelligence. For a company navigating capped-licence processes in new regulatory jurisdictions, that specific capability, sitting alongside Teneo’s broader strategic and financial advisory bench, is directly relevant, even if it isn’t the whole firm’s identity.
The timing against DigiPlus’s own numbers sharpens the read. The headline “124% net income growth” figure obscures a genuine underlying weakness: core operating profit, stripped of the one-time IEC fair value gain, actually declined 44% year-on-year, even as gross gaming revenue fell 9% quarter-on-quarter. DigiPlus is not investing in international advisory firepower from a position of untouchable domestic strength. It’s doing so while its core Philippine business shows real margin and revenue pressure, the same structural contraction the wider market has been reporting all year. That makes the international push read less like opportunistic expansion and more like a deliberate hedge against a domestic ceiling management can see clearly in its own numbers.
For competitors who have treated DigiPlus as a primarily domestic operator, this is the moment to revise that assumption. A company building dedicated international infrastructure, pursuing multiple overseas licences in parallel, Brazil live, South Africa in progress, New Zealand filed, and now adding senior advisory support with real government-affairs capability, is signaling serious, sustained overseas commitment, not a single opportunistic bet.
The New Zealand filing deserves attention on its own terms too. A framework offering up to 15 licences opening in a single window is a genuinely competitive allocation process, and Teneo’s government affairs and risk advisory capability is directly relevant to securing a favourable position in that kind of contest, not just complying with the rules once licensed.
What to watch
New Zealand’s licensing process through year-end. Whether DigiPlus’s expression of interest converts into an actual licence award, and how it’s positioned relative to other applicants in a capped 15-licence field, is the first real test of whether Teneo’s involvement is translating into results.
DigiPlus’s Q3 2026 results, specifically whether core net income, excluding one-time gains, shows continued year-on-year decline. A third consecutive quarter of underlying domestic weakness would confirm the international push is a structural response, not an opportunistic side bet.
Whether other major Philippine operators follow with their own international advisory hires or overseas licence filings. DigiPlus moving first on this kind of political and regulatory advisory relationship, while domestic peers face similar contraction, could prompt a similar response from competitors assessing their own growth ceiling.
What this means for operators
If you’ve been benchmarking your own strategy against DigiPlus as a domestically-focused competitor, that assumption needs updating now. DigiPlus is building durable international infrastructure and senior political advisory capacity in parallel, not sequentially, which suggests real intent to compete for a meaningful share of overseas licensing wherever it opens next. If you have your own international ambitions, this raises the competitive bar for what a serious expansion effort looks like to a regulator evaluating applicants.
What this means for compliance
DigiPlus’s core net income decline, masked by a one-time non-operating gain, is worth flagging internally as a pattern to watch for when reading your own or competitors’ reported results. Fair value gains from investment holdings can significantly distort headline profitability figures, and any internal or board-facing analysis of sector performance should strip out non-operating items before drawing conclusions about underlying market health.
What this means for industry bodies
A dominant Philippine operator visibly pivoting investment toward international markets, while its own numbers point to domestic pressure, is a useful data point for any conversation with PAGCOR about the domestic operating environment and its effect on long-term investment decisions by licensed operators. This is also a moment to consider whether the industry has an interest in tracking or supporting Philippine operators’ overseas expansion as a sector-level narrative, since New Zealand and other emerging Asia-Pacific markets represent real opportunities for Philippine operator expertise to travel.