By Aerol John Pateña/PNA
MANILA — Net income of Globe Telecom reached PHP18.45 billion in 2018, which represents a 22 percent increase year-on-year over PHP15.08 billion the year before, due to strong demand for its data-related services.
Its consolidated service revenues for last year amounted to PHP140.23 billion higher by 10 percent from PHP127.92 billion in 2017.
“The continued strong revenue performance was once again driven by data-related services across all business segments. This was likewise supported by Globe’s pervasive 4G/LTE network, and the wide array of content offerings, through its partnerships with industry leaders and global content brands,” Globe Chief Financial Officer Rosemarie Maniego-Eala said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) on Tuesday.
The company’s mobile service revenues reached PHP106.93 billion which was up 9 percent to PHP98.48 billion from the previous year.
Mobile data revenues were higher by 28 percent to PHP55.3 billion compared to PHP43.06 billion reported in 2017 as mobile data traffic increased from 600 petabytes in 2017 to 956 petabytes in 2018.
Mobile data was the biggest contributor to its mobile business segment which accounted for 51 percent of total mobile service revenues compared to 44 percent in 2017.
“The sustained growth momentum in mobile data revenues was driven by the increasing consumption of streaming and always-on digital services coupled with the growing smartphone penetration,” according to Eala.
“Likewise, data traffic rose as more Globe customers are benefitting from the company’s massive network upgrades,” she added.
On the other hand, mobile voice revenues posted PHP30.35 billion or down 6 percent year-on-year while mobile SMS revenues totaled PHP21.28 billion, or lower by 8 percent versus 2017.
As of end December 2018, Globe’s mobile subscribers stood at 74.1 million which will now become its new baseline due to the impact of the extension of the validity of prepaid load to one year which was set by the National Telecommunications Commission.
The network service provider’s fixed line and home broadband revenues was higher by 13 percent to PHP33.31 billion compared to PHP29.42 billion.
Globe’s home broadband revenues reached PHP18.54 billion up by 19 percent due to continued subscriber expansion in fixed wireless solutions particularly the growing popularity of its Home Prepaid Wi-FI product.
Total home broadband subscriber base grew 24 percent from last year and now stands at over 1.6 million, of which around 61 percent are home wireless subscribers.
Its corporate data business ended the year with PHP11.8 billion in revenues driven by the sustained circuit base expansion, the strong demand for domestic and international leased line services, cloud-based services, and managed/modern business solutions.
Globe is eyeing to spend PHP63 billion as capital expenditures (capex) this year for the expansion of its data network amid strong subscriber demand for mobile data services.
“We are proud of what we have achieved in 2018 both in terms of financials and network expansion. We will continue to build our network capacities to improve the internet experience as we re-invest our gains back to our network, which is now close to 33 percent of our revenues, to be able to deliver a differentiated level of customer service,” according to Globe President and CEO Ernest Cu.
Globe has spent PHP43.3 billion capex for 2018 mostly for data-related services to address customer demand for more bandwidth-intensive content.
