MANILA, Philippines – Pangilinan-led telecommunications giant PLDT posted slow growth in the first nine months of 2024, with single-digit gains in revenue across all business streams.
PLDT recorded a P28.07 billion-attributable net income for the January-to-September period, just inching up from the P27.88 billion recorded a year ago. Consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) went up by just 3% to P80.7 billion over the same period, while its telco core income — minus the impact of asset sales and losses from Maya Innovations Holdings — grew 2% to P26.6 billion.
“With nine months of 2024 behind us, we reaffirm our guidance for telco core income at north of P35 billion,” PLDT and Smart chairman and chief executive officer Manuel Pangilinan said in a statement on Tuesday, November 12.
For the nine-month period, consolidated service revenues posted a 2% increase to P144.9 billion.
“We have much work to do, we’re not entirely happy with our revenue growth this year. Revenue streams have really hit us hard this year,” Pangilinan said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
While the company clarified that there are revenue streams that posted stronger growth, there were reported drags from its legacy services.
The company’s individual wireless business earned P62.1 billion in the first nine months of the year, with earnings from mobile data accounting for 89% or P55.2 billion. The company said it has 41.2 million active data users, each averaging 11.6 GB — 7% more than the 19.8 GB each user consumed in the same period in 2023.
Smart had around 60.3 million mobile subscribers as of end-September 2024.
Meanwhile, PLDT recorded a “steady rise” in Fiber revenues. This comes as 228,000 installations were done in the third quarter of 2024 — the highest number of installations done since the first quarter of 2023 after the company’s new broadband products were met well by the market. The company’s nine-month Home revenues stood at P45.2 billion, 92% or P41.7 billion of which were contributed by its Fiber network.
Its enterprise segment earned P36.1 billion, owing its 4% growth to the ICT business.
The company is expecting its full-year EBITDA to reach P100 billion, which Pangilinan said would be “an all-time high” for PLDT.
“We’re quite optimistic that it would still be a good year for PLDT this year, but we have to do better next year,” Pangilinan said. – Rappler.com