Buoyed by the recent sale of roughly half of its tower assets in the Philippines – a process that generated approximately PHP77 billion (USD1.47 billion) for the company – PLDT Inc. president and CEO Alfredo Panlilio is quoted by The Philippine Star as saying that his company may sell off its remaining assets in the future. ‘We’d be very busy first completing this transaction so I think we’ll have to consider the balance maybe in the future,’ the official said, adding: ‘But right now the focus is just to complete the transaction. This is a very big transaction for us, not only commercially, but operationally it’s a huge task for our network group to make sure that the transition plan happens seamlessly. So right now we’ll focus on the first almost 6,000 towers.’ The closure of the first sale is expected to take place next month with the final closure expected by 4Q22.
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, earlier this month PLDT announced that its subsidiaries Smart Communications and Digitel Mobile Philippines (Sun Cellular) had signed agreements to sell 5,907 telecom towers and related passive telecom infrastructure to subsidiaries of edotco Group and EdgePoint, which are respectively part of Malaysia’s Axiata and US-listed DigitalBridge Group. Specifically, 2,973 towers located primarily in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao will be acquired by ISOC edotco Towers and 2,934 towers located in Luzon by Comworks Infratech (owned by EdgePoint).