Despite challenging macroeconomic conditions, PLDT Inc. reported a 10-percent growth in profit in the first half of the year and is optimistic to regain leadership of the country’s mobile market.
PLDT grew its income to P18.5 billion from P16.8 billion in the same period last year.
Core income, excluding the impact of asset sales and Voyager Innovations, rose by 3 percent to P17.6 billion from a year ago, PLDT said.
It attributed the growth mainly to higher earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization as well as lower depreciation, partly negated by the increase in financing costs.
Alfredo Panlilio, president and chief executive officer of PLDT and Smart Communications Inc., said the service revenue guidance for the year is a low single-digit growth, while the telco core income is projected to reach P33.5 billion to P34 billion.
“We have seen softness in the inflation, and in wireless we are seeing progress and we are expecting Home (broadband business) to be stronger than the first half,” Panlilio said at PLDT’s financial briefing for the first semester.
PLDT reported its service revenues grew by 1 percent in the first half of the year to P94.5 billion from P93.7 billion a year ago, led by growth in the Home and Enterprise segments and improving trends in the individual mobile business.
Bulk of the consolidated revenues came from mobile or the individual business, PLDT said, as it expects to sustain the positive momentum in the second half of the year through network expansion and value promo offers.
Smart has registered 52.5 million subscribers as of July 30 — the deadline for the SIM registration mandated by the government — representing almost 80 percent of its end-2022 subscriber base and resulting in a 1.2 million gap with its competitor Globe Telecom Inc.
In 2016, the competitor took over the lead in the mobile market and now with a 1.2 million gap in subscribers, the PLDT Group intends to reclaim leadership, Panlilio said.
“Our objective is to reclaim leadership in mobile… We’re trying to increase ARPU (average revenue per user), value adding services,” he said.
Consolidated EBITDA six months into the year grew by 3 percent to P52.1 billion, due to higher revenues and lower operating expenses, PLDT said. EBITDA margin was at 53 percent for the period.
Consolidated EBITDA is trending to exceed anew the P100-billion mark for 2023, PLDT noted.
PLDT said its capital expenditure for the six-month period was lower by 11 percent to P40.8 billion. The company is seen to spend P80 billion to P85 billion this year, down from last year’s total capital spending of P97 billion.
As of end-June 2023, PLDT’s total number of fiber ports rose to 6.1 million covering around 18,000 barangays nationwide.
PLDT said its fiber infrastructure supports Smart’s approximately 73,800 base stations, including around 4,700 5G base stations and about 38,800 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) base stations deployed nationwide.
Smart’s network covers around 97 percent of the population with 3G, 4G/LTE and 5G.
