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Friday, March 29, 2024

PLDT sees improved income in 3rd quarter

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PLDT Inc. said it expects a “more positive” bottom line in the second quarter of 2016 from a quarter ago.

PLDT chairman and chief executive Manuel Pangilinan told reporters the comnpany’s second quarter profits would be “slightly more positive” than in the first quarter.

PLDT, partly owned by Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co. Ltd. of the Salim Group and Japan’s NTT group, reported a net income of P6.22 billion in the January-to-March period, down 34 percent from P9.48 billion year-on-year. 

When asked if the company could achieve its profit guidance of P28 billion this year, Pangilinan said “I think we should be able to meet our guidance numbers.”

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Core profit, which excludes foreign exchange gains or losses and other non-recurring income, dropped 22 percent to P7.21 billion in the first quarter from P9.28 billion last year. 

Consolidated revenues amounted to P42.78 billion in the January-to-March period from P42.55 billion in the same period last year. 

PLDT Group’s mobile phone subscribers stood at 64.4 million at end-March. 

PLDT has raised its capital expenditures this year to P48 billion from the original target of P43 billion to transform its network from legacy to purely digital.

The company plansto use the additional capex to roll out new cell sites using the 700-megahertz spectrum in key cities nationwide.

PLDT’s mobile unit Smart recently rolled our long-term evolution or LTE cell sites using the 700-MHz spectrum and posted peak download speeds of up to 222 megabits per second.

Unit Smart Communications Inc. said it planned to activate 360 cell sites with 700 MHz this year, initially in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao as a part of a three-year program to bring faster, affordable and reliable internet to users.

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