PLDT Inc. said Friday net income fell by a fifth in the first quarter from a year ago, on weak revenues from its mobile phone business.
PLDT, partly owned by Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co. Ltd. and Japan’s NTT group, said net income amounted to P4.95 billion in January to March, down 20 percent from P6.21 billon it earned in the same period last year.
Core profit, which excludes foreign exchange gains or losses and other non-recurring income, also dropped 26 percent to P5.3 billon from a year earlier.
The company is maintaining a profit guidance of P21.5 billion this year, despite the lower first-quarter profit.
“As we indicated earlier, our focus since the latter part of 2016 has been to stabilize the overall business, which involves stemming the decline of revenues and profitability in the wireless consumer segment, sustaining the upward momentum in the Home and Enterprise businesses and laying the ground for recovery through the digital transformation of our businesses,” said PLDT chairman and president Manuel Pangilinan.
“We’ve produced encouraging results in the first quarter this year, thanks to the continued strong growth posted by our home and enterprise businesses, whilst our wireless consumer group re-doubled efforts to break the negative momentum and hold the line,” he said.
Consolidated service revenues went down 7 percent to P35.6 billion from last year’s P40.59 billion.
The company’s home and enterprise business units led the way in the first quarter, posting double-digit revenue increases year-on-year.
Home service revenues amounted to P7.8 billion, up 12 percent, while enterprise service revenues rose to P8.5 billion, climbing 13 percent from the first quarter of 2016.
PLDT’s wireless consumer group’s service revenues went down 18 percent to P14.7 billion, largely due to declines in text and voice revenues.
The combined subscriber base of Smart, TNT and Sun rose 400,000 to reached 63.1 million as of end-March.
Pangilinan said PLDT in the next 25 years would be very different from the previous 25 years.
“The world today is turning deeply digital. And, as our results for the first quarter this year show, PLDT and Smart are moving with the times and making their digital pivot at an accelerating pace,” he said.