Despite economic headwinds, PLDT Inc. said it is on track to reach its full year guidance of P33 billion telco core net income this year, driven by the sustained growth of its home and mobile broadband businesses.
“Full year results likely to be ahead of (full year) 2021, I believe this is in reference of P33 billion core income target which, we believe, at this stage would most likely be met by full year 2022,” Manuel Pangilinan, PLDT chairman, said at a briefing on the company’s nine-month financial results.
In the first nine months of the year, PLDT reported P25.4 billion in telco core income, excluding the impact of asset sales and Voyager Innovations, up by 10 percent from P23.1 billion in the same period last year.
The company’s net income jumped 45 percent to P27.4 billion, which includes P22.3 billion in pre-tax gains from its tower sale up to the third closing, as compared to last year’s net income of P18.8 billion.
“Our third quarter performance has shown that the business continues to do well amidst external challenges — first COVID-19, then inflation and high interest rates, not to mention the ever-present typhoons — and the indication so far is that the full year performance will be ahead of last year especially as the fourth quarter is typically a good one. We must focus and execute well,” said Alfredo Panlilio, PLDT and Smart Communications Inc. president and chief executive officer.
“Ultimately, PLDT’s main advantage is having three revenue engines with strong competitive and complementary positions. This has made the PLDT Group resilient in challenging times,” Panlilio added.
PLDT said 80 percent of its consolidated service revenues came from data and broadband services, which showed sustained growth nine months into the year.
Mobile data revenues grew by 2 percent to P53.7 billion, home broadband rose by 18 percent to P37.7 billion and corporate data was up by 12 percent to P17.9 billion, during the period.
PLDT said it is looking at increasing the initial P85-billion capital expenditure (capex) guidance this year.
“We are also watching our capex levels, especially the impact of the weakening peso on our dollar-denominated debts and imported capex, even capex committed in previous years and current ones. With the disciplined effort led by our Transformation Office, we are trying to manage some softness in our topline, as well as tightly control our costs,” Panlilio said.
In the first nine months, PLDT has spent P67.3 billion, up by 6 percent compared to last year. Of the total capex spent this year, bulk or P52.5 billion was spent for network improvement and the balance was spent for data center, subsidiary and business operations.
As of end September this year, PLDT and its wireless unit Smart’s customer base stood at 75.9 million, of which 68 million are mobile subscribers, 4 million are broadband and 3.8 million are fixed line subscribers.
