PLDT to increase capex this year – Pangilinan
Credit to Author: LISBET K. ESMAEL| Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 16:15:33 +0000
TYCOON Manuel V. Pangilinan remains upbeat about PLDT Inc.’s operations this year, and said the telecommunications giant would spend more to continue improving its network.
In a recent event in Makati City, Pangilian told reporters that the listed company’s financial performance had been good last year and was optimistic about its performance this year.
According to him, PLDT’s capital expenditures (capex) for 2019 would be “higher” than last year’s P58 billion, which was necessary to finance network upgrades, both for its wireless and home segments. He did not disclose the new amount.
We have “practically finished” rolling out Third Generation (3G) mobile technology and “we’re going to push the build-out of 4G,” the PLDT chief said.
Citing the August 2018 report by London-based wireless-coverage-mapping company OpenSignal, he noted that “we’re number one in terms of speed and we’re almost equal with [our] competitors in terms of coverage.”
In that report, OpenSignal said PLDT’s wireless arm Smart Communications had a faster 4G average download speed than competitor Globe Telecom, posting 13.02 megabits per second (mbps), compared with the Ayala-led telecommunication titan’s 7.34 mbps.
In terms of coverage, Globe’s 4G network availability was at 67.79 percent, higher than Smart’s 64 percent.
“We will [have a] big push on FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) and [the] fiberization of our legacy copper cables,” Pangilinan said.
As of end-September, PLDT’s fixed-home broadband business surpassed 5.75 million homes.
Increasing its capex this year is expected to help PLDT improve its earnings, which dipped to P16.5 billion in the first nine months of 2018 from P21.8 billion in the same period the year before.
The company explained, however, that the latest amount was due to the reduced value of its network assets and higher gain from asset sales in 2017.
Service revenues in January-September climbed 4 percent to P111.9 billion from P107.3 billion the year before.
PLDT shares plunged P22 or 1.76 percent to close at P1,225 apiece on Monday.
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