PLDT on track to meet P37-B core profit guidance

PLDT’s fourth quarter net profit is “most likely better than the third quarter,” Napoleon L. Nazareno, the listed telecom company’s president and chief executive officer, told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Makati City on Thursday night.

PLDT made P7.94 billion in the three months ending September, down 14.4% from P9.27 billion during the same period a year ago. It has so far booked P27.9 billion in net profit and P28.6 billion in core income for the January to September period, down 3% and 1% respectively from year-ago levels.

PLDT, according to Mr. Nazareno, is “on track” to hit its already recast P37 billion full-year core profit guidance.

That profit goal was a revised number from an earlier announced P39.5 billion. The changes were prompted by lower earnings, which PLDT attributed to “intensification of competition which was felt significantly during the quarter,” Mr. Nazareno had said during PLDT’s quarterly financial briefing in Makati City on Nov. 4.

Last week, the company official said prospects for the fourth quarter should be better.

“Fourth quarter is usually the best quarter for us, because there’s normally an uptake in mobile broadband during the Christmas season,” Mr. Nazareno said.

“However, with the free internet, it might be tempered a little bit,” he added.

PLDT has mobile broadband subscribers of 3.7 million as of end-September, its latest financial report show. That’s 330,483 more than end-2013’s 3.4 million subscribers.

About 2.7 million of that total are wireless broadband subscribers, and the rest, fixed line.

Smart Broadband, Smart Communications, Inc.’s wireless broadband service offered through its wholly-owned subsidiary Smart Broadband, Inc., had a wireless broadband subscriber base of nearly 2.1 million at the end of the period, about 1.6 million of whom were on Smart Broadband’s prepaid service.

In addition, Sun Cellular, a brand owned by Digital Mobile Philippines, Inc. that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Digital Telecommunications Philippines, Inc. (Digitel), had a wireless broadband subscriber base of close to 600,000.

Meanwhile, PLDT’s fixed broadband subscribers increased by 11% from the end of 2013, bringing the total fixed broadband subscriber base to 1.1 million for the first nine months of 2014, and now represent 48% of the fixed line subscriber base.

Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd., PLDT’s parent, announced on Nov. 9 that it is allocating about P36 billion in fresh capital outlay next year for its Philippine-based telecom unit.

Mr. Nazareno said on Thursday that his company is “still finalizing it [budget], but definitely higher than last year’s.”

PLDT’s capital expenditure (capex) for this year is projected at P34.5 billion, also revised from an earlier projection of P32 billion.

A “higher capex level for 2015 than this year” would be warranted to outdo the competition, he said.

“We are fast-tracking our data capacity build-out due to the positive response to our free Internet promo as well as our TD-LTE (Time-Division Long-Term Evolution) build-out to meet increasing fixed wireless data demand. In light of the market’s continued appetite for data services, we expect higher capex,” Mr. Nazareno said.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Popular Posts