Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), the country’s dominant telecoms service provider, says its net profit for the three months ended 30 September 2012 flat-lined as rising costs related to sales promotions offset any gains made in service revenues. PLDT booked net income of PHP9.2 billion (USD223.0 million) in the period under review, down marginally from PHP9.3 billion in July-September 2011, but bullishly predicted that growth in broadband will drive sales in fiscal 2013 as a result of the recent completion of its USD1.6 billion CAPEX plan to upgrade its networks and expand its internet gateway capacity. The carrier, part-owned by Hong Kong’s First Pacific, Japan’s NTT Communications and NTT DoCoMo, said core profit (stripping out currency and derivatives-related items) declined by 2% year-on-year to around PHP9.4 billion, but stated that it was still on course to meet its full-year core profit guidance of PHP37 billion.
PHP recorded third-quarter service revenues of PHP41.5 billion, up 13% y-o-y, on operating revenues that climbed in part due to its purchase of fellow operator Digital Telecommunications Inc (Digitel) last year. PLDT also said that although CAPEX is expected to top PHP38 billion this year, the figure will begin to drop dramatically from next year after the completion of its internet gateway upgrade and rollout of fibre to residential households by end-2013.
PLDT Group’s net profit in the first nine months of the year was PHP28.7 billion, down 6.2% from 9M11, even as total revenue climbed 13% y-o-y to PHP128.6 billion. Nine-month core profit fell 8.4% y-o-y to PHP28.0 billion, and the group’s consolidated cellular subscriber base was 68.6 million as of end-September 2012, it said.