A survivor is brought to shore, as Philippine authorities continue search and rescue operations after a ferry sank off the coast of Basilan past midnight JanuaryA survivor is brought to shore, as Philippine authorities continue search and rescue operations after a ferry sank off the coast of Basilan past midnight January

Basilan ferry deaths draw focus to Aleson Shipping’s political ties

2026/01/30 10:27

With 29 confirmed fatalities days after M/V Trisha Kerstin 3 sank off Basilan on Monday, January 26, Mindanao-based Aleson Shipping Lines is once again under fire. The tragedy has prompted the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to ground the entire passenger fleet of the company that has managed to keep its dominance despite being linked to 32 maritime incidents since 2019. 

Acting Transportation Secretary Giovanni Lopez said that aside from the shipping company, accountability must also be expected from government authorities for any possible shortcomings. (READ: DOTr grounds entire Aleson passenger fleet as ferry probe begins)

“If we exact accountability from the ship owners, we are going to exact higher accountability from those in government,” Lopez said. “When it comes to maritime safety, that is not negotiable; that is not optional. Business considerations are just secondary.”

Bangsamoro Transition Authority Member Naguib Sinarimbo welcomed the DOTr’s decision to suspend the firm’s fleet, highlighting that the incident far exceeded a mere accident, which demands justice and accountability.

“Those responsible for ensuring vessel safety, enforcing maritime regulations, and executing effective rescue operations must be held fully accountable. The loss of life under calm sea conditions underscores the urgent need to examine possible operational failures, regulatory neglect, or negligence,” Sinarimbo said.

The regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) also called for a thorough and transparent investigation.

“We call on the concerned authorities to undertake a thorough investigation to prevent the recurrence of similar tragedies,” read a statement from BARMM interim Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua.

Like BARMM officials, the Muslim Lawyers Group in Zamboanga, Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi (MLZ) asserted that when accidents occur repeatedly – as seen in the case of Aleson Shipping Lines – “they cease to be mere accidents and become a failure of responsibility.”

In a statement, the lawyers’ group emphasized that the tragedy should result in a congressional inquiry. The group said transparency is vital, particularly because Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso of Zamboanga City, where Aleson is based, has ties to the shipping lines, and the disaster, based on several accounts, occurred under calm sea conditions.

COMPANY SHARES. Stakeholder information for Aleson Shipping Lines, Inc., based from November 2025 SEC filed document, reveals that Mary Joy Tan-Olaso—wife of Zamboanga City Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso—holds a 24.75% stake in the company, with shares valued at more than ₱19 million. Chart by Reinnard Balonzo/Rappler. Data from the SEC, aggregated by Rappler.
Olaso’s ties with Aleson

Upon review of documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Rappler found that Olaso’s family has a stake in the company. 

The company’s latest General Information Sheet from November 2025 lists Olaso’s wife, Mary Joy A. Tan-Olaso, among its stakeholders. Mary Joy holds 24.75% of the shares, which amounts to at least P19.8 million. 

Over DZXL-Radio Mindanao Network, Olaso confirmed that his wife is a part owner of Aleson, but denied he has anything to do with its current business dealings and operations. His wife is a member of the family behind the embattled shipping company.

Olaso, however, said he once worked for Aleson as a ship captain, superintendent, and operations manager.

He strongly denied using his power to influence the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) and Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) in favor of the shipping company.

“I am not in control of the Coast Guard; I have no control of Marina…. That’s unfair to me…. I will not accept that…. I am very straightforward,” Olaso said.

This connection, however, draws renewed attention to a March 2023 incident where another Aleson-owned vessel caught fire in the waters off Basilan, resulting in over 30 deaths. At the time, Olaso, who was then a Zamboanga City congressman, attributed the blaze to a defective light bulb in an unused cabin.

“Later on, when it was reported, the fire reached the bridge and it was already a big fire,” Olaso said in 2023. “According to the officers, they tried to put out the fire, but [it] spread so fast. Most likely the crew failed to [stop it with an] extinguishing system; perhaps they also panicked.”

Basilan ferry sinkingA survivor is brought to shore, as Philippine authorities continue search and rescue operations after a ferry sank off the coast of Basilan past midnight January 26, 2026.
Legislative agenda

Olasa’s congressional records show a focused legislative agenda for the maritime sector, proposing significant shifts in industry policies. This includes several bills that could directly or indirectly affect Aleson Shipping Lines. 

According to the House database, these House bills remained pending in their respective committees. These include:

  • HB 04592: Allowing shipping companies to renew and revalidate competency certificates for seafarers currently on board via online platforms.
  • HB 04596: Establishing Zamboanga City Port Authority. 
  • HB 04594: Amending RA No. 10635 to update Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) of the Marina.
  • HB 02301: Implementing an administrative restructuring and reorganizing of the PCG.

In the Philippines, Marina and the PCG are the primary agencies that strictly govern regulations regarding the use of old, dilapidated, or repurposed vessels. Meanwhile, local governments like that of Zamboanga City hold overlapping jurisdiction concerning environmental safety and vessel disposal.

This means that Aleson’s continuous expansion and acquisition of shipping and passenger vessels since the 1990s have been largely governed by Marina and PCG regulations and inspections.

“Maritime transport remains a lifeline for the people of Mindanao and our island communities. When that lifeline fails, we owe the victims more than sympathy. We owe them justice. We owe them reform. We owe them the assurance that no family will endure the same loss again. We owe it to those who perished  not only to mourn, but to act,” Sinarimbo said. – Rappler.com

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Summarize Any Stock’s Earnings Call in Seconds Using FMP API

Summarize Any Stock’s Earnings Call in Seconds Using FMP API

Turn lengthy earnings call transcripts into one-page insights using the Financial Modeling Prep APIPhoto by Bich Tran Earnings calls are packed with insights. They tell you how a company performed, what management expects in the future, and what analysts are worried about. The challenge is that these transcripts often stretch across dozens of pages, making it tough to separate the key takeaways from the noise. With the right tools, you don’t need to spend hours reading every line. By combining the Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) API with Groq’s lightning-fast LLMs, you can transform any earnings call into a concise summary in seconds. The FMP API provides reliable access to complete transcripts, while Groq handles the heavy lifting of distilling them into clear, actionable highlights. In this article, we’ll build a Python workflow that brings these two together. You’ll see how to fetch transcripts for any stock, prepare the text, and instantly generate a one-page summary. Whether you’re tracking Apple, NVIDIA, or your favorite growth stock, the process works the same — fast, accurate, and ready whenever you are. Fetching Earnings Transcripts with FMP API The first step is to pull the raw transcript data. FMP makes this simple with dedicated endpoints for earnings calls. If you want the latest transcripts across the market, you can use the stable endpoint /stable/earning-call-transcript-latest. For a specific stock, the v3 endpoint lets you request transcripts by symbol, quarter, and year using the pattern: https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={q}&year={y}&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY here’s how you can fetch NVIDIA’s transcript for a given quarter: import requestsAPI_KEY = "your_api_key"symbol = "NVDA"quarter = 2year = 2024url = f"https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={quarter}&year={year}&apikey={API_KEY}"response = requests.get(url)data = response.json()# Inspect the keysprint(data.keys())# Access transcript contentif "content" in data[0]: transcript_text = data[0]["content"] print(transcript_text[:500]) # preview first 500 characters The response typically includes details like the company symbol, quarter, year, and the full transcript text. If you aren’t sure which quarter to query, the “latest transcripts” endpoint is the quickest way to always stay up to date. Cleaning and Preparing Transcript Data Raw transcripts from the API often include long paragraphs, speaker tags, and formatting artifacts. Before sending them to an LLM, it helps to organize the text into a cleaner structure. Most transcripts follow a pattern: prepared remarks from executives first, followed by a Q&A session with analysts. Separating these sections gives better control when prompting the model. In Python, you can parse the transcript and strip out unnecessary characters. A simple way is to split by markers such as “Operator” or “Question-and-Answer.” Once separated, you can create two blocks — Prepared Remarks and Q&A — that will later be summarized independently. This ensures the model handles each section within context and avoids missing important details. Here’s a small example of how you might start preparing the data: import re# Example: using the transcript_text we fetched earliertext = transcript_text# Remove extra spaces and line breaksclean_text = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', text).strip()# Split sections (this is a heuristic; real-world transcripts vary slightly)if "Question-and-Answer" in clean_text: prepared, qna = clean_text.split("Question-and-Answer", 1)else: prepared, qna = clean_text, ""print("Prepared Remarks Preview:\n", prepared[:500])print("\nQ&A Preview:\n", qna[:500]) With the transcript cleaned and divided, you’re ready to feed it into Groq’s LLM. Chunking may be necessary if the text is very long. A good approach is to break it into segments of a few thousand tokens, summarize each part, and then merge the summaries in a final pass. Summarizing with Groq LLM Now that the transcript is clean and split into Prepared Remarks and Q&A, we’ll use Groq to generate a crisp one-pager. The idea is simple: summarize each section separately (for focus and accuracy), then synthesize a final brief. Prompt design (concise and factual) Use a short, repeatable template that pushes for neutral, investor-ready language: You are an equity research analyst. Summarize the following earnings call sectionfor {symbol} ({quarter} {year}). Be factual and concise.Return:1) TL;DR (3–5 bullets)2) Results vs. guidance (what improved/worsened)3) Forward outlook (specific statements)4) Risks / watch-outs5) Q&A takeaways (if present)Text:<<<{section_text}>>> Python: calling Groq and getting a clean summary Groq provides an OpenAI-compatible API. Set your GROQ_API_KEY and pick a fast, high-quality model (e.g., a Llama-3.1 70B variant). We’ll write a helper to summarize any text block, then run it for both sections and merge. import osimport textwrapimport requestsGROQ_API_KEY = os.environ.get("GROQ_API_KEY") or "your_groq_api_key"GROQ_BASE_URL = "https://api.groq.com/openai/v1" # OpenAI-compatibleMODEL = "llama-3.1-70b" # choose your preferred Groq modeldef call_groq(prompt, temperature=0.2, max_tokens=1200): url = f"{GROQ_BASE_URL}/chat/completions" headers = { "Authorization": f"Bearer {GROQ_API_KEY}", "Content-Type": "application/json", } payload = { "model": MODEL, "messages": [ {"role": "system", "content": "You are a precise, neutral equity research analyst."}, {"role": "user", "content": prompt}, ], "temperature": temperature, "max_tokens": max_tokens, } r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload, timeout=60) r.raise_for_status() return r.json()["choices"][0]["message"]["content"].strip()def build_prompt(section_text, symbol, quarter, year): template = """ You are an equity research analyst. Summarize the following earnings call section for {symbol} ({quarter} {year}). Be factual and concise. Return: 1) TL;DR (3–5 bullets) 2) Results vs. guidance (what improved/worsened) 3) Forward outlook (specific statements) 4) Risks / watch-outs 5) Q&A takeaways (if present) Text: <<< {section_text} >>> """ return textwrap.dedent(template).format( symbol=symbol, quarter=quarter, year=year, section_text=section_text )def summarize_section(section_text, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024"): if not section_text or section_text.strip() == "": return "(No content found for this section.)" prompt = build_prompt(section_text, symbol, quarter, year) return call_groq(prompt)# Example usage with the cleaned splits from Section 3prepared_summary = summarize_section(prepared, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024")qna_summary = summarize_section(qna, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024")final_one_pager = f"""# {symbol} Earnings One-Pager — {quarter} {year}## Prepared Remarks — Key Points{prepared_summary}## Q&A Highlights{qna_summary}""".strip()print(final_one_pager[:1200]) # preview Tips that keep quality high: Keep temperature low (≈0.2) for factual tone. If a section is extremely long, chunk at ~5–8k tokens, summarize each chunk with the same prompt, then ask the model to merge chunk summaries into one section summary before producing the final one-pager. If you also fetched headline numbers (EPS/revenue, guidance) earlier, prepend them to the prompt as brief context to help the model anchor on the right outcomes. Building the End-to-End Pipeline At this point, we have all the building blocks: the FMP API to fetch transcripts, a cleaning step to structure the data, and Groq LLM to generate concise summaries. The final step is to connect everything into a single workflow that can take any ticker and return a one-page earnings call summary. The flow looks like this: Input a stock ticker (for example, NVDA). Use FMP to fetch the latest transcript. Clean and split the text into Prepared Remarks and Q&A. Send each section to Groq for summarization. Merge the outputs into a neatly formatted earnings one-pager. Here’s how it comes together in Python: def summarize_earnings_call(symbol, quarter, year, api_key, groq_key): # Step 1: Fetch transcript from FMP url = f"https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={quarter}&year={year}&apikey={api_key}" resp = requests.get(url) resp.raise_for_status() data = resp.json() if not data or "content" not in data[0]: return f"No transcript found for {symbol} {quarter} {year}" text = data[0]["content"] # Step 2: Clean and split clean_text = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', text).strip() if "Question-and-Answer" in clean_text: prepared, qna = clean_text.split("Question-and-Answer", 1) else: prepared, qna = clean_text, "" # Step 3: Summarize with Groq prepared_summary = summarize_section(prepared, symbol, quarter, year) qna_summary = summarize_section(qna, symbol, quarter, year) # Step 4: Merge into final one-pager return f"""# {symbol} Earnings One-Pager — {quarter} {year}## Prepared Remarks{prepared_summary}## Q&A Highlights{qna_summary}""".strip()# Example runprint(summarize_earnings_call("NVDA", 2, 2024, API_KEY, GROQ_API_KEY)) With this setup, generating a summary becomes as simple as calling one function with a ticker and date. You can run it inside a notebook, integrate it into a research workflow, or even schedule it to trigger after each new earnings release. Free Stock Market API and Financial Statements API... Conclusion Earnings calls no longer need to feel overwhelming. With the Financial Modeling Prep API, you can instantly access any company’s transcript, and with Groq LLM, you can turn that raw text into a sharp, actionable summary in seconds. This pipeline saves hours of reading and ensures you never miss the key results, guidance, or risks hidden in lengthy remarks. Whether you track tech giants like NVIDIA or smaller growth stocks, the process is the same — fast, reliable, and powered by the flexibility of FMP’s data. Summarize Any Stock’s Earnings Call in Seconds Using FMP API was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story
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