Business World

PhilWeb trims net loss in 3rd quarter

- Denise A. Valdez

VENTURING INTO electronic bingo (e-bingo) continues to help PhilWeb Corp. trim its losses, as the company posted a lower attributab­le net loss in the third quarter.

The listed gaming firm said in a regulatory filing Monday that its attributab­le net loss ended at P4.5 million in the third quarter, narrowing from P25.21 million in the same period last year, due to higher revenues from its robust e-bingo business.

Gross revenues of the company grew 48% to P148.79 million, fueled by the 73 electronic gaming outlets operated by the company.

“E-bingo has been a pleasant surprise for PhilWeb. Now, aside from our revenues from e-Games outlets and our e-casino software services, we also have revenue streams from ebingo outlets and a network of over a thousand e-bingo machines deployed throughout the country,” PhilWeb Chairman Gregorio Ma. Araneta III said in a statement yesterday.

“With the new sources of revenue, we have doubled our growth engines for the coming year.”

Year to date, PhilWeb’s attributab­le net loss stood at P26.79 million, down 62% from the same nine-month period last year. Revenues in the first three quarters also rose 33% to P394.91 million at end-September.

Expenses also increased to P414.45 million in the period, up 7.9% from the first nine months of 2018.

“This shows that we are well on track regarding our commitment to getting PhilWeb back to its former profitabil­ity levels, during which times we were able to pay out high dividends to stockholde­rs and generate significan­t share price increases as well,” PhilWeb President Dennis O. Valdes said.

The added revenue streams of PhilWeb came from signing a joint cooperatio­n agreement with the Palmary Corp. earlier this year, which made it indirect owner of several electronic gaming outlets.

“With our move to enter the e-bingo space in addition to our strong presence in e-casino, PhilWeb remains committed to our role in consistent­ly increasing the revenues of PAGCOR, which we have done for over thirteen years,” Mr. Araneta said.

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