PLDT Inc. reported a 4% increase in net income in the six months to 30 June 2019, as its consumer wireless business continued to demonstrate strong growth. The Filipino telecoms behemoth booked net profit of PHP12.235 billion (USD235.2 million) in the six-month period, up from PHP11.805 billion in the same period a year ago as revenues increased 2% to PHP84.038 billion. H1 2019 revenues were driven by an increase in wireless revenues to PHP46.231 billion, it noted, fuelled by strong demand for data and broadband. Indeed, the group highlighted that data now accounts for 65% of the company’s total revenues, with year-on-year increases enough to offset a 7% decline in domestic voice revenue, a 14% drop in SMS sales and a 29% drop in international voice service sales. Pre-tax profits of PHP17.071 billion marked a 10% improvement on an annualised basis, and EBITDA surged 20% y-o-y to PHP39.666 billion, with an EBITDA margin of 49% (up six percentage points).
PLDT reported 67.547 million mobile subscribers at end-June 2019, up 15% from 58.511 million y-o-y, while the number of fixed broadband subscribers stood broadly unchanged at 2.041 million – broken down as 1.841 million fixed line and 200,799 fixed wireless broadband subscriptions. The telco also reported 2.711 million fixed voice telephony users, down 2% from 2.756 million at end-June 2018. PLDT spent PHP32.7 billion of its PHP78.4 billion capital expenditure allocation in the first six months of 2019.