A beer-to-infrastructure tycoon had threatened to sell the crown jewel of his sprawling empire. The message was artfully vague: strategic review, portfolio optimization and the usual corporate speak.

Some serious investors assumed the magnate was finally ready to cash out the one division that had long been more headache than halo.

Turns out the whole thing was a bluff so elegant it could have been written by a Balangiga war strategist.

Before the first missiles lit up the Strait of Hormuz and sent Dubai crude screaming past $100 a barrel, the tycoon had already done the harder work at home.

The headline number was impossible to ignore: Consolidated net income jumped 84 percent from the year before. Operating income rose 28 percent and earnings per share climbed.

Total sales volume slipped 1 percent and the company still made more money dramatically.

The real story was hidden in the margins. Domestic sales volumes rose 5 percent, fueled by an economic rebound, tourism and sharper marketing.

By the time the Iran conflict jolted global markets, the company was no longer the leveraged, volatile beast investors once feared.

It entered the price spike with a stronger balance sheet, fatter domestic margins and a war chest of cash.

The tycoon’s “we might sell” overture suddenly looked less like a serious divestiture and more like the world’s most expensive game of chicken. Boardroom insiders now whisper to Nosy Tarsee that the offer was never meant to close.

Rather, it was meant to probe, flush out genuine buyers, pressure lenders on refinancing terms and simply remind the street that the jewel was not a burden but a bargaining chip.

When fuel prices spiked in the first quarter of 2026, the profit machine did not just hum — it roared.

The same asset the tycoon had dangled is now printing money faster than the Bangko Sentral.

The offer that once had dealmakers salivating now looks exactly like what it always was: a world-class bluff.