Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) says its net profits for the three months ended 30 September 2013 climbed 2% year-on-year to PHP9.25 billion (USD214 million). The carrier, which has been actively involved in improving its networks and services in recent years to boost capacity for broadband and data traffic, says it has now reached a tipping point where the growth of new revenue streams (i.e. data) is outpacing in decline sales derived from legacy services. Q3 2013 revenues increased 3% y-o-y to PHP40.57 billion, while core profit (excluding one-off items) edged up 2% to PHP9.39 billion, with the firm’s president, Napoleon Nazareno, commenting bullishly: ‘With much of our core business in a stable state, we anticipate the upward trend of our revenues to continue’.
For the nine-month period PLDT booked net profit of PHP28.95 billion, up 2% y-o-y, on a similar 2% rise in service revenues to PHP121.60 billion. The carrier reported that total broadband and internet revenues in January-September reached PHP19.50 billion, up 16% on the same period of 2012, while cellular revenues moved up 2% to PHP86.4 billion. Finally, fixed line service revenues rose 4% y-o-y to PHP44.2 billion.