Globe 9-month profit climbs 11% to P13 B

Ayala-led Globe Telecom Inc. booked an 11 percent increase in earnings in the January to September period from a year ago as it benefitted from the investment made by Ant Financial Services Group and Ayala Corp. in subsidiary Globe Fintech Innovations Inc. (Mynt) and had higher revenues.

In its disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Globe said its net income reached close to P13 billion in the ninemonth period, up from P11.72 billion in the same period last year.

Globe attributed the ninemonth net profit result to the recognition of the one-time gain related to the fair value of its retained equity interest in Mynt, arising from the investment of Ant Financial Services Group and Ayala Corp.

Ant Financial has acquired a 45 percent stake in Mynt earlier this year.

The one-time gain allowed Globe to offset equity losses and spectrum amortization related to the acquisition of the telco assets of San Miguel Corp., higher interest expenses, and depreciation charges booked during the period.

Excluding the impact of non-recurring charges, onetime gain and foreign exchange and mark-to-market charges, Globe’s core net income declined five percent to P11.21 billion as of end-September this year from the previous year’s P11.75 billion.

Globe’s service revenues reached P95.14 billion, six percent higher than the P89.53 billion last year.

Mobile service revenues which accounted for bulk or 77 percent of the telco’s consolidated service revenues, increased seven percent to P73.11 billion as of end-September this year from P68.50 billion in the same period last year amid growth in mobile data and short messaging service revenues.

As of end-September, Globe registered 59.3 million mobile subscribers, down nine percent from 65.4 million subscribers in the previous year due to elevated level of prepaid churn rates.

The telco spent around P36.8 billion in capital expenditures as of end-September of this year to address subscribers’ growing demand for data.

Bulk or 84 percent of the total capital expenditures for the period was spent for data-related initiatives.

Globe president and chief executive officer Ernest Cu said the company intends to continue to invest in improving the network as well as the service to sustain growth.

“As we focus more on the network improvement and differentiated customer experience, we expect to maintain our current momentum, and round out the year with a stable growth performance,” he said.