Fast internet fuels Globe’s sales up by 3%

The record-high levels of capex in the past several years allowed the company to focus on capital efficiency and optimization

Globe Telecom slightly increased its consolidated service revenues by three percent to P162.3 billion last year from P158 billion in 2022.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday, Globe said the growth was mostly driven by mobile services with revenues at P112.4 billion or 5 percent higher year-on-year. Its mobile business accounted for 69 percent of total revenues.

“This improvement was largely contributed by prepaid with pent-up demand for affordable mobile devices, alongside increasing time spent on high-bandwidth online video services and social media content over smartphones,” Globe said.

Mobile data posted a nine percent increase to P90.9 billion as subscribers reached 57 million last year.

This expanded mobile data revenues to 81 percent from 78 percent of the total mobile revenues.

Meanwhile, internet revenues for corporate clients grew by 7 percent to P18.3 billion amid the digital transformation of businesses nationwide.

Revenues of Home broadband for households, on the other hand, declined by 7 percent as some customers shifted to postpaid fiber internet.

Its users grew by one percent and revenues by 14 percent as it offers faster connection despite multiple users.

Home Broadband users decreased by 32 percent to 1.8 million.

Total data revenues rose to 83 percent from 81 percent of the consolidated service revenues, which also come from Globe’s e-wallet, virtual healthcare, education technology, entertainment, business outsourcing and e-commerce services.

Mynt, its financial services arm and operator of GCash, boosted its equity earnings by 193 percent. Globe owned P2.4 billion of Mynt’s equity earnings.

Meanwhile, call revenues declined by 9 percent and SMS revenues by 10 percent.

Non-telco revenues were up from P4.2 billion to P4.9 billion.

Capital optimization

Operating costs including subsidy grew 3 percent to P80.9 billion as Globe said the economy remained “challenging.”

While capital expenditure or capex dropped by 30 percent to P70.6 billion, the firm said it was able to provide data needs of clients through capital optimization backed by huge investments in the previous years.

“The record-high levels of capex in the past several years allowed the company to focus on capital efficiency and optimization,” Globe said.

“Thus, Globe is guiding lower capex at $1 billion for 2024 and below that in 2025,” it said further.

Rise of faster 5G internet

Globe reported it installed 894 5G sites last year, widening its outdoor coverage to 97.9 percent in Metro Manila and 92.36 percent both in Visayas and Mindanao regions.

Lines for fiber internet for households also increased to over 199,000 last year.