Leandro Leviste’s rise from clean-energy wunderkind to political crusader is not just a story about ambition or reform — it is a case study in how power, permissions, and timing intersect in the Philippine market. At the center is a renewable-energy platform that monetized contracts, franchises, and regulatory entitlements long before most megawatts were delivered, transferring execution risk from a politically connected founder to utilities, lenders, regulators, and ultimately consumers.

Backed by a dynastic pedigree, enabled by Duterte-era political capital, and capped by a multibillion-peso exit to Meralco, the SPNEC–Solar Philippines saga exposes how clean energy can be financialized ahead of performance — and how “performance politics,” when layered onto unfinished infrastructure, becomes not reform but a new market risk that the public ends up paying for.

On October 27, 2025, Leandro Leviste executed a block sale of 10.83 billion shares in SP New Energy Corp. (SPNEC) to the Meralco group. The headline number — ₱13.76 billion — was large enough to drown out the only question that ultimately matters: what, exactly, was being valued?

The public narrative unfolded predictably. A young founder monetizes a vision. A blue-chip utility buys scale. Philippine renewables enter their institutional phase. Yet SPNEC is not a traditional power company anchored on operating cash flows. What Meralco’s renewable arm acquired was a platform dominated by development-stage assets — service contracts, land positions, permits, project companies, and expectations — priced on the assumption that delivery would follow.

That delivery may still come. But while the timing of value creation matters because it exposes how the country’s renewable-energy framework can be gamed, what is also important is why markets should care.

DEAL. Manuel V. Pangilinan (left), chairman, president, and CEO of Metro Pacific Investgments Corp. (MPIC) and Leandro Leviste, then-CEO and president of SP New Energy Corp., sign a share purchase agreement on March 27, 2023, making MPIC the single largest shareholder of SPNEC, developer, owner, and operator of solar power projects in the Philippines. Photo courtesy of MPIC Facebook 

This was not a one-off exit. SPNEC disclosures show that Leviste’s holding companies agreed to sell 14.60 billion shares to Meralco’s MGen for ₱18.26 billion, while earlier transactions — including the public float — brought cumulative sold shares to 16.44 billion for about ₱20.49 billion by mid-2025. By late October, market coverage increasingly framed the divestment arc as targeting more than ₱34 billion in proceeds as the Meralco transactions progressed.

These figures do not describe the monetization of a mature operating utility. They describe the monetization of optionality — the right to build, the right to claim capacity, the right to be “in the pipeline,” and the right to sit at the intersection of policy, planning, and capital.

Timeline: From political capital to liquidity event

What this timeline shows
This is a story of sequencing: visibility, first; permissions, second; contracts, third; monetization, fourth, and reform rhetoric, last. Markets read this pattern instinctively — even when politics prefers not to.

The asset: not electrons, but entitlements

This dynamic is not unique to one firm. It is embedded in the system. The Renewable Energy (RE) Service Contracts for development rights and the Green Energy Auction Program (GEAP) for securing power supply agreements can award scale far faster than it can enforce delivery. In well-governed markets, that gap is managed through strict milestones, performance bonds, swift terminations, and penalties that discourage speculation. In weakly policed markets, the gap becomes a business model.

The most significant risk signal in the Solar Philippines ecosystem is therefore not ideology or personality. It is the widening gulf between awarded capacity and completed capacity. In October 2024, the Department of Energy (DOE) disclosed that 21 of the 42 service contracts awarded to Solar Philippines were facing discontinuance or termination for failure to meet commitments.

That matters on two levels. First, the Philippines plans its grid as if awarded capacity will be delivered. When developers miss timelines at scale, the country does not merely lose a handful of solar farms; it loses assumed future supply embedded in planning models. The shortfall is paid for through higher-cost generation, tighter reserves, and recurring alerts.

Second, this mismatch is precisely what turns “clean energy” into a financial instrument. In markets, expectations can be sold. Projects can be priced before they produce. If enforcement is slow or forgiving, the economic reward shifts from building megawatts to accumulating the permissions to someday build megawatts.

What this scorecard shows:
SPNEC is not merely an aggressive developer — it is an outlier. Its value creation has been driven more by permissions and proximity than by electrons delivered to the grid. That does not make it illegal. It makes it systemically risky.

Dynastic capital as an accelerant

It is impossible for me to do forensics on this platform without confronting the role of political lineage. Leviste is not merely an aggressive entrepreneur; he is the product of a political dynasty whose influence has long extended across media, legislation, and policy.

In May 2024, Leviste made a surprise move into the media sector, acquiring an 8.5% stake in ABS-CBN — then deeply discounted after losing its franchise during the Duterte administration. The transaction instantly lifted the stock, reinforcing a pattern already familiar to market participants: when Leviste moves, prices move.

On its face, the ABS-CBN investment was opportunistic value-hunting. But the context mattered. Leviste had no background in media. His mother, Loren Legarda, was one of ABS-CBN’s most prominent anchors for over a decade before entering politics. Solar Philippines’ own social-media accounts framed the acquisition as a symbolic, almost familial gesture — complete with archival images of Legarda at the anchor desk and Leviste as a child.

Nothing illegal here. But it was instructive. It illustrated how personal history, political capital, and market positioning intertwine — and how investors read those signals. Influence does not always operate through direct intervention. Sometimes it operates through credibility transfer: the implicit assurance that doors will open, risks will be managed, and outcomes will be navigable.

SOLAR. Then-president Rodrigo Duterte chats with then-Solar Philippines chief Leandro Leviste at the inaugration of the Solar Philippines Factory in First Philippine Industrial Park in Barangay Sta. Anastacia, Sto. Tomas, Batangas, on August 23, 2017. Photo courtesy of Solar Philippines

The same pattern is visible in energy. In 2017, then president Rodrigo Duterte personally attended the launch of Solar Philippines’ manufacturing facility in Batangas, conferring early presidential visibility on a young company seeking scale. Two years later, Duterte signed Republic Act 11357, granting Solar Para sa Bayan — a Leviste-owned firm — a 25-year franchise with unusually broad scope.

The law was valid. But its effect was unmistakable. It transformed a business plan into a permission structure with bankable value. Dynasties rarely pass down cash; they pass down access, franchises, and regulatory pathways that can later be monetized.

Critics at the time noted the speed with which the franchise moved through Congress and the intensity of lobbying behind it. Leviste denied that his mother played a role. But market actors do not trade on denials alone. They trade on probability — and on patterns.

What the balance sheet confirms

SPNEC’s balance sheet reinforces what kind of company it is. Its interim filings show a platform actively leveraging up to fund development, managing hedges, and monetizing scale through institutional capital. That is normal for a development platform — but decisive for understanding risk.

In its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Form 17-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, SPNEC disclosed that Terra Solar signed a ₱150-billion, 15-year Omnibus Loan and Security Agreement with six banks and had already drawn ₱25.15 billion. In the same filing, it reported a ₱688.7-million loss from foreign-exchange futures designated as cash-flow hedges.

No longer are these footnotes, but signals. Once a company draws ₱25 billion against a ₱150-billion facility before generating operating cash, tolerance for delay collapses. Every month of slippage compounds financing costs and narrows the margin for error. Currency and procurement exposure is real; hedging losses are the market cost of funding large projects whose equipment and Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contracts are linked to foreign exchange (FX). [Vantage Point] Why green energy is failing)

Most critically, the equity story now depends on execution without misstep. Development platforms look strongest in their promise phase and most fragile in delivery — a transition that markets routinely misprice.

That is why institutionalization cuts both ways. In March 2025, global investor Actis completed a US$600-million transaction for a 40% stake in Terra Solar through Meralco’s renewable unit. This is patient capital. It raises the probability of delivery — but it also raises the bar. Scale backed by that level of financing leaves little room for narrative drift.

From business exit to political instrument

Where concern deepens is not in any single deal, but in how incentives align. Leviste monetized his platform, crystallized liquidity, and only then stepped fully into politics — armed with a high-profile exposé aimed squarely at the current administration. (READ: Who else got hold of the ‘Cabral files’ prior to her death?)

By targeting the present government’s public-works apparatus while leaving largely untouched the Duterte-era political ecosystem that accelerated his own rise, Leviste’s crusade begins to look less like neutral reform and more like political force projection. Anti-corruption becomes selective. Transparency becomes asymmetric.

LL. Senator Loren Legarda and son Leandro Leviste welcome then-president Rodrigo Duterte at the inaugration of the Solar Philippines Factory in First Philippine Industrial Park in Barangay Sta. Anastacia, Sto. Tomas, Batangas, on August 23, 2017. Photo courtesy of Solar Philippines

In infrastructure markets, this matters. Political uncertainty widens regulatory risk premia, raises the cost of long-gestation capital, and encourages defensive policymaking. Performance politics becomes a market externality, especially when the performer sits atop a platform dependent on long-term policy stability.

The reckoning question

Meralco’s involvement undeniably strengthens the platform. The most charitable interpretation is that a developer with scale was absorbed by a utility capable of execution. But that institutional muscle also sharpens the accountability question.

If the renewable transition is to be built on platforms that can be sold before they produce, the Philippines must confront whether it is comfortable with a clean-energy market where the most valuable asset is not generation, but permission — and where political proximity can be monetized long before the first megawatt arrives.

In my opinion, the remedy is procedural, not rhetorical. Faster enforcement of milestones. Tougher performance bonds. Transparent, contract-level delivery dashboards. Stricter disclosure standards for development-stage valuations. And a clear separation between political branding and infrastructure governance.

Because the country does not run on narratives. It runs on electrons. 

And until execution catches up with monetization, the SPNEC-Solar Philippines ecosystem will remain a case study in how Philippine clean energy can drift from a national imperative into a tradable instrument — priced on promises, protected by patience, and settled in cash long before delivery is complete. Doing so would mean  depending solely on market mechanisms that would not result in stable consumer prices, real emission reductions, evenhanded community development, and genuine energy security for our country. – Rappler.com