PLDT Inc. said Thursday net income jumped 44 percent in 2018 from a year ago, boosted by the higher sales of all business segments.
The country’s largest telecom company said net income hit P19.2 billion last year, up from P13.3 billion in 2017. Consolidated core income, however, fell 5 percent to P26.2 billion as the accelerated depreciation arising from its aggressive network transformation programs offset gains from the sale of PLDT stakes in Voyager and Rocket Internet.
Excluding Voyager operations, PLDT’s core income rose 3 percent to P24.4 billion.
“Given the positive trends in 2018 and our plans for 2019, we expect our telco core income to rise to P26 billion,” PLDT chairman and president Manuel Pangilinan said.
“In 2019, we aim to attain a higher level of growth by leveraging, even more, the power of the combined PLDT and Smart, working as one team, focused on delivering the customer experience”•not as a traditional telco as we have been”•but as a data-driven, digital services company,” he said.
PLDT said 2018 was a breakthrough year for PLDT with all of its main revenue businesses”•Home, enterprise and consumer wireless businesses”•registering robust top line growth.
The company said consolidated revenues, net of interconnection costs, rose 5 percent to P194.4 billion in 2018, excluding P1.1 billion of revenues from Voyager Innovations.
The combined revenues from its main businesses”•Home, enterprise and consumer–registered a 9 percent year-on-year increase to P137.4 billion.
“This marks the return of growth in overall service revenues last recorded in 2014,” PLDT said.
Sustaining their robust performance of the past several years, the enterprise and Home groups boosted revenues by 10 percent”•to P38.4 billion and P36.4 billion, respectively.
PLDT Group’s mobile subscriber base stood at 60 million as of end-2018, up from 57.6 million in 2017.
The big upswing came from the wireless consumer group. After several years of decline and then stabilizing in 2017, the wireless business registered a 7-percent rise in revenues to P62.5 billion in 2018.
Across all business groups, revenue increases were powered by the robust growth in data and broadband. Revenues from data and broadband amounted to P90.2 billion, up 37 percent year-on-year, and accounted for 60 percent of the total.
“After persistent efforts over the past three years to execute our digital pivot, we have returned our wireless consumer business firmly on the growth path in 2018, alongside our Home and Enterprise businesses which have been consistently posting healthy growth rates,” Pangilinan said.
“With all cylinders of our revenue engine now firing, we are positioned to throttle into high gear, and do better in 2019,” he said.
Pangilinan said PLDT’s capital expenditures for the year amounted to P78.4 billion, up by P20 billion from 2018.
This aggressive roll-out is intended to further push the already significant network advantage of PLDT and Smart and support its active campaign for more revenues.