The new president and chief executive of PLDT Inc. on Tuesday vowed to gain more market share by providing world-class network and better customer experience amid the stiff competition.
“We are expecting competition to be really much stiffer this year. Our push is to make sure that we have the best network in the country, and in fact we benchmark ourselves against not local competition, but regional telcos,” Al Panlilio, the new president and chief executive of PLDT, said during a virtual stockholders’ meeting.
“So we are wary of what competition is doing. We know basically what’s their offering in the market, but at the end of the day, it’s gonna be the strength of the service, the strength of the customer experience that will win in the market. We just need to do better than competition… and I think that’s the only way we can win over the customer,” he said.
Manuel Pangilinan, chairman of PLDT who stepped down as president and chief executive, said the company would spend between P88 billion and P92 billon this year to expand its network, particularly 5G.
“It’s a push to build an excellent network 5G particularly and fiber-to-the-home which is very flourishing business for the company. So we support what Al said about promoting operational excellence and deliver a kind of global standard of customer experience,” Pangilinan said.
PLDT said it was on track to meeting its core net income of between P29 billion and P30 billion this year after posting a modest growth 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 2-percent drop in net income to P5.80 billion in the first quarter from P5.91 billion in the same period last year.
Core net income grew by 9 percent to P7.50 billion during the period from P6.87 billion in the same quarter last year. Consolidated service revenues amounted to P44.8 billion, up by 8 percent year-on-year, led by data/broadband business.
The company’s consumer wireless revenues grew by 7 percent to P22.1 billion in the first three months, while PLDT Home posted a 19-percent growth to P10.9 billion.
Enterprise segment recorded total revenues of P10.3 billion, up by 4 percent year-one year.
PLDT set between P88 billion and P92 billion for 2021 capital expenditures to support revenue growth.